When Saint Sebastian's School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos.
Patience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn't satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way. And to piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must at last reckon with the sins of her own past.
[A] showstopper of a series debut ... Scorched Grace's power derives from Holiday’s nonstop internal struggle ... I cannot wait to read the sister’s next investigation, of mysteries and of her own self.
What do you get when you mix a poetic writer with the mystery genre? More metaphors than you can shake a stick at. Laugh out loud metaphors. Stunningly beautiful metaphors. All interlaced within an exciting mystery that is as different as it is classic in feel ... The twisty plot, gorgeous language, and the renegade nun as a main character bring this novel into its own category. One often thinks of the amateur sleuth as belonging in cozy mysteries. This is not that. Scorched Grace is a novel both exciting and profound. The crisp pacing keeps things moving briskly forward while the writing takes you deep. I can’t ask for more than that.
Douaihy handles...questions with aplomb, though there are invitations to suspend disbelief, and readers will tire of reading about how hot it is in New Orleans and how much the characters sweat. That said, Holiday is an interesting character, and her story is well plotted—a good thing, since this is obviously going to be a series.
