Weird, gay, and surprisingly accurate historical fiction. The concept of relics & people stealing, displaying, and trading the bodies of saints is generally a fascinating one. It’s inherently gruesome, a fact definitely alluded to in this book. But Nicked takes such a lighthearted approach, telling the story of a heist of a saint’s body through non-stop bumbling action and misfortune, with elements of whimsy right alongside murder. The somewhat naive monk who cannot tell a lie is a perfect foil to the hardened pirate. 

I did find it a little hard to feel too emotionally invested at times; the story is written with a sense of detachment which doesn’t lend itself to feeling like you are experiencing the events in the moment. Instead, it feels more like someone telling you a story of something that happened years ago. It’s hard to know who to even recommend this to—people who know a lot about Christian history and have a very irreverent sense of humor? Fans of gay pirate historicals? It’s sort of Our Flag Meets Death x 10th century monks. hints of Running Close to the Wind but with a totally different tone. 

I really enjoyed some elements of this and really didn’t enjoy some elements. 

The narrator: they did a great job moving from spanish to english, which I appreciated. I was a little uncomfortable with how young they made the main character sound given the content of the book but honestly, she was 17 for most of the book so I think that’s pretty fair. The voice of the 5 year olds was also very different which added to the narration. 

First, the good: the gothic scenery, the spanish influence, the phrases in spanish, the description of the food. This is definitely a fascinating gothic world with a lot of unique characteristics. I also enjoyed the darker elements of the book and found them interesting. The mystery was an interesting one to unravel with twists and turns. 

The not so great: wow, the romance. A 17 year old marries an ageless super powerful being within 2 weeks of meeting him? That timeline is ickier than Twilight. I also just didn’t really get it from either of their perspectives. Obviously it has to be insta-love given the timing but they know so little about each other—Sebastian doesn’t even know who he is!—when they are ready to be in love. It just fell really flat for me. Whether the sex scenes are too far for a YA book, I’ll leave to other people to decide for themselves but it’s not exactly fade-to-black, nor did I feel like it was necessary to move the story forward. The ending was also… not great. Facilitating the murder of people due to their having been accused but not convicted of a crime is… an interesting “happily ever after,” I guess.