Thanks to Pantheon and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC! This is an unbiased review.

I absolutely DEVOURED this book. Fans of The Locked Tomb should snatch this up. We have a sweet little love story between a completely hapless and helpless little ignorant baby of a monk, and a ferocious and dashing relic thief/liar/pirate. We have bones galore, gory tales of Catholic saints, queer yearning, lies upon lies upon lies, the Middle Ages Were Magic, and a true story of a heist for the ages.

The biggest reason for my comp to TLT comes from the combination of grotesque myth and sheer, joyous, human comedy. Somehow managing to be SO funny without anachronism or fourth wall breaks and having the humor come just from the pure ridiculousness of human nature is a real feat that I don't often see in historically accurate books.

The writing is gorgeous and rich, managing to capture the wildness and magic of the 11th century without derision. The choices the characters make are informed so deeply by the times they live in, and the author makes every aspect of this beautiful story come to glowing life.

I absolutely loved every part of this book from cover to cover and expect it to be one of my favorites for years to come. I can't wait to reread it.

Ahh! This was so perfect. M.T. Anderson has bestowed to readers a perfect novella stuffed full of history and longing. There are so many things I could gush on and on about from this book, but I'll keep it short. Firstly, the fact that this is based off of real events (which I didn't know going into the book) made it so much more fascinating. I could tell the author spent quite a bit of time researching this time period and the real heist of St. Nicholas's body. Second were the characters! Nicephorus and Tyun were so fun to read about. Their histories and relationship were so well crafted, even in such a short amount of pages. Genuinely some the best main characters I've read in a while. I would 100% read more from them. Third was the writing, which was just stunning, from the descriptions to the dialogue. This is a book I could widely recommend, to history buffs and queer adult audiences, to high fantasy lovers and existing Anderson fans. This was so well done. This definitely has solidified a spot on my top ten reads of this year already.

I thoroughly enjoyed this queer medieval heist novel (what an irresistible pitch, my god). I showed up for the gang's quest to steal a saint and stayed for the tender exploration of what it means to believe and how we lie to the ones we love to keep them safe. The novel is short, pacey, and wonderfully descriptive. I'll be reading everything that Anderson writes!

Well-written book I enjoyed the historical aspect of it and the religious elements. Sometimes religious elements can be a bit boring or too much, but in this story, everything flowed quite nicely. If you are looking for a story that has historical and adventurous elements( queer as well), definitely give this book a chance. I'll be checking out more books from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for allowing me to read this book!

Synopsis: Pox has begun to seep through 1807, Bari, Italy. One night Nicephorus, a monk, is busted by Saint Nicholas in his dreams. An archbishop and other high figures declare that Nicephorus’ dream is a vision. This results in the monk sailing to Myra with a “treasure hunter” called Tyun who has agreed to steal the bones of Saint Nicholas and send them to Bari for a price.

Rating: 4/5 stars ⭐️

Opinion: I quite enjoyed reading this book. Though I didn’t get or have prior knowledge of the Christian stories in this book, it didn’t matter much to me. I think this could be a bit daunting for other readers.

I loved Nicephorus as he was just so smart and kind. I also liked the other MC Tyun as he was a contrast to the monk. Though, it’s clear that they’re is supposed to be romance between the two, I didn’t feel that there was any tension or romance between the two until the end. I did like the nickname “dreamer,” that was given to Nicephorus and thought that was cute

This book as some nice actions scenes that kept it interesting.

I wanted to see the use of Italian or Latin as this is set in Italy, but that’s a personal and biased want as I’m an Italian speaker haha!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately Nicked fell short of my expectations. The story structure and narration styles wasn't my cup of tea. And I felt the leads lacked the chemistry and personality to really reel me in.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “Monty Python” set in the world of “The Name of the Rose” with a sprinkling of “Weekend at Bernie’s” is how I would best describe “Nicked”. This was truly a fun, satirical, and oddly moving adventure about a monk and a thief. With a bawdy and interesting cast of characters-their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to “relocate” the remains of beloved Saint Nicholas in an attempt to combat the pox sweeping through Europe. Hijinks ensue. Betrayals occur. The line between truth and a lie is toed on more than once occasion. Plus, we get a cheery little romantic dalliance between two major characters. Who could ask for more?

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I was a huge fan of FEED as a teen so I had super high expectations of this! It was a little too all over the place for me personally, and the writing felt a little too dense.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc of this book! Although its premise and cover(beautiful, isn’t it), piqued my interest, I ultimately felt unsure and underwhelmed by this title. And that is mostly in part due to its narration style.
This felt disjointed and almost structurally shaken up.

I’m honestly not entirely sure what to think about this book. It almost felt like I was reading two people trying to write the same story, one of whom was a fantastic writer, and then the other person who really didn’t know what they were doing, because I would be getting really invested into the plot, and then a line would come up that would just completely throw me off guard. Not even in a good way. I’m not too sure that “raucous” or “delightfully queer”, both in the synopsis, would be the best ways to describe this book either. The characters are gay (saying gay instead of queer because that is the literal extent of queerness), sure, but I wouldn’t really say that the story itself, or the cast apart from the two main characters is. They also had zero tension, so that may be a major contributor. I liked a lot of the writing, and the plot was really fun at certain points, but I think that that’s about it, and that’s from a lover of heist books, a former Catholic and a queer person. I think at a lot of points the book felt too short to tell what it wanted to tell, and the point of view was always too disconnected to really like the characters.

An absolutely delightful and rollicking adventure of a book!!

I found the balance of medieval and medievalism to be fantastic -- I always struggle with reading medieval historical fiction, because so many authors don't put the work in to actually understand medieval cultures and worldviews. (Blame my background in Medieval Studies.) But Anderson so deftly fleshes out a world that is weird, fantastic, and both different and the same from our own. It's extremely clear how much care and passion was put into building this world and populating it with these characters.

That being said, I think this book is incredibly approachable for those without a medieval background. Anderson's distinctive voice shines through, balancing the medieval and contemporary in a way that seems almost effortless while reading, though is obviously finely crafted.

So, so strongly recommend. I will be pre-ordering my own copy and encouraging my library to do the same!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The beginning almost lost me- far too many comments about different races, ethnicities, and religions in the context of being "unusual" or out of the norm, all for the sake of "historical accuracy". I could have done without anyone's thoughts or feelings about outsiders to Christianity or specific countries, partially because keeping track of who conquered who and what that means etc was a lot of work, especially if you haven't recently researched this time period in history, and keeping track of the internal biases of characters was largely unnecessary on top of that. If I was reading for pleasure and not to review, I probably would have dropped off before getting to the good stuff.

The plot though... I'm so glad I pushed through. The final half of the book saved it. While I was hoping for a bit more relationship building at sea, overall I grew to really enjoy the cast of characters and their antics. The banter was fun, certain moments and comments felt extremely clever - in particular the days after the battle.

Tyun is perfect and I almost wish the book was from his POV rather than Nicephorus - in some ways the synopsis did set me up to think that would be the case. His pride in his work, his smooth talking skills, the wit and banter. "Dreamer", "Dream boy"... I love him. He carried this book, in my opinion. When I hit roughly 60% of the book and realized Nicephorus and Tyun would be traveling alone, I celebrated.

I learned to enjoy Nicephorus for his naivety and curiosity, and his confusion or wonder (but not angst!) at his own feelings gave us some funny internal moments that I wanted more of. His desperation to stop being a criminal's accomplice was the funniest thread throughout, especially as we reached the conclusion.

I enjoyed myself, but I'm unsure if I could recommend this to my other reader friends due to the issues mentioned above. Sometimes historical inspiration needs to be just that - inspiration, not a blueprint. But overall, I am glad to have picked up and finished Nicked, I gave Nicked 3.5 stars on other sites, rounded up to 4 here.