I DNF at 65%. It just didn't capture my attention because of the way it moved from scene to scene and I am pretty sure I solved the mystery in the first 20% of the book. Often it would be a scene of 3 or 4 characters, the scene would end, we'd open again to a solo scene with Sister Holiday, and then she would run into the exact same characters as were in the scene before. It made the whole thing feel very awkward and the pacing poor. Additionally, the group scenes (even 2 person scenes) contained very little description and sensationalized dialogue making it almost more of a play than a book. Perhaps a full cast could have improved these scenes? Ultimately, I don't feel the audio really added anything to this title.

I may pick up a sequel because the setting (New Orleans) and Sister Holiday were interesting. However, there were still issues with Sister Holidays characterization. At times it felt like the author was doing a subversive take on a hardboiled, masculine, noir type investigator. However, the book didn't show enough self awareness or consistency to pull this off and Sister Holiday's vices felt frustrating rather than entertaining or evoking of empathy.

I'm happy to admit it was curiosity that drew me to this audiobook, the first publication from Gillian Flynn Books. Coming from Gillian Flynn, legendary author of Gone Girl, Dark Places and Sharp Objects, my curiosity and expectations were high...

Sister Holiday is the self-proclaimed 'first punk nun', she's tattooed, queer and a devoted member of a small New Orleans convent.

The character, the hardboiled style and the vivid descriptions quickly draw you in to this mystery thriller. The crime is arson, with a death or two tied in. First impressions may be of a queer-cosy mystery, but you'd be wrong!

The character writing around Sister Holiday is excellent, there's plenty of thought and depth, with memories and personal revelations of her life before joining the sisterhood. Her journey through life which unfolds throughout the story is very well done.

It may initially feel like The Sister Holiday Show with a small supporting cast, but again, you'd be wrong. There are plenty of strong scenes and depth involving the key players. It really blossoms as the story develops.

It builds as is progresses, and gets deeper and more tense. I was completely hooked.

The narration by Mara Wilson is perfectly suited, she is Sister Holiday. For the sequel I'd happily choose Audiobook again to enjoy her narration, though I've no doubt the book would be a great read too.

Highly recommended, something different, and I really believe this book will succeed and gain a devoted following for all the right reasons.

Thanks to Netgalley and Zando Books

I wanted to love this one so much...it's got:
-the best cover ever
-a tattooed, smoking, queer nun at its center, who's investigating things on her own
-a ragtag group of sisters
-a series of crimes making up the mystery

...But it's just a little to slow for me. The background contextualization often slowed things down more without adding substantively to the story. I'm so sad this one didn't work for me.

Thanks to Zando, Gillian Flynn Books, and NetGalley for complimentary copies of this book.

Scorched Grace grabbed my attention with the beautiful colours, stained glass, and smoking nun on the front - but, as we know, don't judge a book from its cover. I wanted to like this book so badly. As a queer woman myself, I often love stories with LGBTQ leads - however, Sister Holiday was over the top.

The story features two timelines: her past as Holiday Walsh - a queer, guitar playing addict - and her present as Sister Holiday - a (still) queer nun and guitar teacher at St. Sebastian's Catholic school. I found the interweaving of the timelines to be messy and difficult to understand, especially via audiobook narration.

This story feels like it features representation for representation's sake and exists only to highlight that the author understands sociopolitical issues. Additionally, I feel like Holiday's queerness is a caricature and an unrealistic representation - especially the "sex scenes".

Many times while reading, I considered DNFing the book. However, I wanted to persist so that I could share my thoughts in case there were any redeeming qualities or twists: there were not.

The writing in this book reminded me of a creative writing assignment where the author needed to pad the story with contrite metaphors and description to get to her required word-count. This made the book boring, especially where the plot and mystery were not riveting.

The present storyline takes place over a short period of time (maybe a week or two) where a number of fires are set, targeting St. Sebastian's. The police and fire department in the book are incompetent and untrustworthy, according to Sister Holiday, and therefore she decides to investigate this on her own.

Sister Holiday's past life and involvement with amateur investigatory work would have worked better as separate chapters. However, the author would instead have Sister Holiday start dissociating and thinking about her past in ridiculous detail in the middle of a large event - causing me to forget what was happening in the current storyline. I would have gone back to try to figure it out, but it wasn't interesting enough.

If you choose to read this book, please know there are a number of content warnings, including: homophobia, police brutality/gay bashing, gang rape, incest, rape, substance abuse (opioids, cocaine), alcohol abuse, murder, suicide, cancer, infidelity, religious trauma, etc.

I received a review e-ARC and audiobook ARC of Scorched Grace from Net Galley, Dreamscape Media, and Gillian Flynn Books in exchange for my honest review.

Holiday Walsh flees Brooklyn for New Orleans to start over as a Nun. Now at St. Sebastian's Sister Holiday teaches music and makes friends and enemies. When a fire erupts in the school, Holiday manages to save two students, but a custodian is killed. While the police are slow to investigate, Holiday does her own sleuthing as more fires occur.

The book deals with the current mystery and delves into Holiday's past. She has always been devout in her own way and definitively makes a non conventional nun. There are many unique characters: her nemesis Sister Honor, Fire investigator Ribeau (sp?) and surly student Prince. The suspects are many and I found the ending very satisfying.

Overall the narrator does a good job, but the New Orleans accents sounded more New Jersey/Brooklyn to me.

Sister Holiday is a nun; a queer, chain smoking, foul mouthed, punk rock nun that that goes against the grain of Catholicism in every way imaginable and I love her. She is also, however, the best part of this book.

The story and the side characters failed to hold my attention and were a little lackluster. At first, the great mystery of the arson-spree feels incredibly high stakes, but that urgency falls away fairly quickly and the rest of the mystery, along with Sister Holiday's sleuthing, feels a bit mundane compared to the beginning of the story.

We love a book that feel like it can heal religious trauma. Scorched Grace follows a queer, tattooed, cigarette smoking nun, Sister Holiday.

Sister Holiday is the friend I always wished I had.

This book makes me wonder how fucked up real-life nuns are underneath their habits! Because man, Sister Holiday has a ton of unresolved issues!! This was an interesting read and I'm interested in where the series will lead with additional books! I will definitely read the next book in this series when it comes out.

#ScorchedGrace
#NetGalley

Sincerest thanks to Zando and NetGalley for sharing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to fall in love with this book but it fell a little short for me. The concept of a tattooed, queer punk turned nun in search of redemption solving a mystery in New Orleans hooked me immediately. I was so jazzed to be granted this audiobook that I started listening right away. The pace was right, there was some sharp, insightful commentary, and it was fun.

I enjoy a good cozy mystery and I think this might be the alternative version to a bookseller in Maine solving a local murder with the help of her tabby. Unfortunately, like many of these, I felt like the storyline and many of the characters sort of fell flat. No shortage of cheesy lines and mystery cliches, the unconventional aspect seemed to end at the initial description. That being said, I did enjoy it overall and will likely read more installments should this become a series.

With regard to the narration, the voice was pleasant, even a little soothing, but also fell flat to me. I didn’t appreciate much in the way of emotional inflection and the general cadence seemed a bit slow. This may be intentional, to portray the cool confidence of the story’s main character however I think it struck me as false bravado and ultimately left me feeling less invested.

I enjoyed my time reading and listening to this. Was it the best book i’ve ever read? probably not. was this fun and kept me curious throughout the whole story? yes! our main character’s voice reminded me of alex from ninth house and i wonder if the narrator of this audio was the one also narrating ninth house. overall a good book but i wasn’t particularly invested in the plot or the characters. or the murder mystery for that matter. 3.5⭐️

Loved the concept of this one - a queer, tattooed, former rocker becomes a nun who teaches music at St. Augustine's. Sister Holiday does her best not to swear, chain-smoke and stay out of trouble. But when someone starts setting fires to St. Augustine and people keep turning up dead, Holiday takes it upon herself to investigate who's doing this.
I thought the narrator did a fantastic job of embodying the sultry voice of Holiday. I ended up listening to this at 1.5x speed because Holiday felt like a noir-style storyteller reminiscent of the 1930's brooding Private Eye's. With the exception of a few falsetto flashbacks, this was easy listening.
There was A LOT of Catholic religious talk and themes - this is about a (progressive) nun, so it's to be expected, but it seemed like overkill at times. If you struggle with religious themes to begin with, this might be a struggle for you. I found the mystery to be solid, the cast of characters to be entertaining and the New Orleans references I'll definitely be reading another Sister Holiday novel if it comes out! I might even grab myself a physical copy because this cover is amazing.
Thank you Zando and Audible for my Advanced Listening Copy!

*I received this book for free through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

"To suffer is a privilege. Pain is evidence of growth".

Unconventional.

The way the author described and compared things was creative and interesting. Lots of topics were discussed. The book teetered between light and dark, for and against both. The narration was perfect. The cover is great.

The main character was unique. A lot of the book was spent inside Sister Holiday's head. It'd be interesting to see how Sister Holiday develops in a follow-up. The ending will catch you off guard. It was quite the journey.

I wanted to love this one so bad! I could see a lot of other people liking it, but I just couldn't get into it. I think maybe the concept is better than the execution in this case. Sister Holiday is a cool character, but I don't know, the story and other characters just didn't draw me in.

I loved this book. A sleuthing queer tattooed nun, what more can you ask for? I loved the story and pacing. To top it all off, I thought the narrator Mara Wilson had such a smooth and soothing voice.

Sister Holiday has a troubled past but is trying to put that behind her now that she has joined Sisters of the Sublime Blood. When multiple fires are set at Saint Sebastian’s School, Sister Holiday’s past comes back to haunt her. Will she be able to solve the crimes before it’s too late?

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy is a fast-paced whodunnit with an unconventional, witty, queer main character who's also a nun! Sister Holiday is a "slightly" reformed former heathen who now dutifully serves at Saint Sebastian's School as a Sister of the Sublime Blood. She's thrown into an investigation when the school goes up in flames but the more she figures out the more secrets she discovers. This story is a unique take on a cozy murder mystery and has a ton of interesting characters, each with their own motives. I really enjoyed Sister Holiday's narrative and how she worked through her leads. The ending was explosive and left me shook!

I love this book. I don’t really know what else to say other than the masterful writing from the author brought the story alive! Would definitely recommend!

I had a feeling this one wouldn't be my cup of communion wine, but I also felt like I should give it a chance. I thought it might be a fun romp, but a queer, smoking, tattooed sister is still a sister, if you get my drift.

Sr. Holiday (named in honor of ... holy days? That's not a thing in Catholicism? I hope she has a saint's name as her middle name, j/s) is a bit of a pill, talks frequently about her "queer super powers" (which is fine, as they relate to queerness, but she seems to invoke them over just being a human being), doesn't curse (wtaf), and is, somehow, after not quite a year as a novitiate, is a crack guitar/music teacher, due to her past years as a rocker in a band, when she drank, smoked, drugged, and f*cked her way around New York, UNTIL a big, bad experience that made her realign her priorities, stop being a practicing lesbian and start being a practicing Catholic/religious sister in New Orleans.

Sr. Holiday inserts herself in the investigation of a fire in the school where she teaches since she's a fan of classic mysteries (wha?) and the NOPD isn't doing all that much, nor is the fire investigator Holiday is weirdly friendly with. Seriously, in any other investigation, she would be cited for wasting police time or something, but of course she's in the thick of it and someone is trying to frame her by leaving her nun clothes at the scene of the fire, in which a custodian died and Holiday saved two students who were in school after hours. Since Holiday is so heavily tattooed, she is required to wear black gloves and a black neckerchief to cover them. Jury is out on whether this is a thing - Google started spitting links to this book when I tried to pin it down.

TBH, I just didn't like her much as a character. She was prickly and not much fun despite all her vices. I felt like the author didn't have a history with Catholicism, which led to some gaffes (what parochial school with an overreaching diocese would be allowed to have a gay-straight alliance as a school club?). I think this one just wasn't For Me.

Mara Wilson did an OK job with the voice acting, albeit a little flat for my taste. I ended up punching the speed to 1.5x to get it done.

I'm upset with myself for sleeping on Scorched Grace initially but so glad I caved and tried it as an audiobook, because Mara Wilson MAKES this book as the narrator. I think it would've been just a three star if I'd read it, rather than listened to. Mara gives Holiday a stubborn, yet uncertain, voice that is just perfect for Holiday. She doesn't necessarily have a voice for every character but she is great at reading dialogue with the appropriate inflection and emotions, which one would naturally expect from an actor (though there are definitely some actors who clearly struggled when given an audiobook - Kat Dennings as Death in Sandman for example, who sounds like she's Ben Stein). It makes me want to watch Wilson in something new.

Scorched Grace advertises itself as a mystery thriller, but really this book is about Sister Holiday. What else could it be when you have such a unique, fascinating, and engaging main character. Yeah, there is a mystery and everything, but I would not have minded this just being a biography about Holiday lol I saw other reviews mention that every other character is basically non-existent, even Holiday's fellow sisters... and I can see that, though I thought they were fine for what the story required, with the exception of the antagonist.

I wish Margot Douaihy had done more with the antagonist, made it less of a surprise of who the responsible party is. She could have made then less obvious but still a possibility even by spending more time on the suspects, which she starts to do with one in particular - but then in the end they all came through as shells, or flat, with a series of listed traits. Would've liked to see more of all of them, which maybe we'll get in a sequel (if there is one).

And I do hope there is a sequel, honestly, because I really, really enjoyed following Sister Holiday on her sleuthing, even if she wasn't very good at it lol Margot Douaihy is a good writer and I can see her only getting better. I have high hopes for this character and story!

Also, isn't that cover stunning?

Thank you to Netgalley and Zando for this audiobook ARC! I really enjoyed the narrator for this story and their accents were on point. This was my first read by this author and I thought their writing was very unique. I would definitely continue to read from this author and this series!