Grave Mercy is the improbable tale of an assassin-y murder-nun, Ismae, on a mission to rescue the Duchess of Brittany from a fate worse than death – a really disgusting old, pervert man. She’s joined along the way by a studly lord-type person, Duval, in order to defeat evil (the French), crown the Duchess, and get laid.
So on the positive side there’s court intrigue, crossbows, britches untied and skirts hitching and all those kinds of shenangians. And given those facts, you would be forgiven for thinking that this is your average bodice ripper with all it’s stripped-to-the-shift, sexy occupational hazards of the 16th century, man-rooty goodness (…or badness?)
But this is actually a YA novel, which makes it awkward because it actually reads far more like it should have this cover:



Look, you can’t just clean up an historical romance, put it through the wash, cut out all the descriptive sex and relabel it YA. It doesn’t work like that. The result is an Historical Romance without any sex - and you’ve just removed the one reason why I WOULD read a Historical Romance.
They tried to do that with that Pirates porn movie. The director loved it so much he cut out the sex and rereleased it as a feature movie. But YOU STILL HAVE A PORN MOVIE! There’s just no three way pirate sex scenes to off-put the fake books, stilted dialogue, ridiculous non-sensical story-lines… actually, it sounds like I AM describing Pirates of the Carribean – so let’s just move on.



The premise was very interesting and I think the idea was most noteworthy. There’s nothing much to complain about with LaFever’s writing and stylistic choices in that regard. But it’s the plot and the pacing that is its biggest let down.

Quite early in this novel we see the plot mostly dry up and the fantasy of a badass killer-nun seems to be unattainable as we’re left with a soggy romance that never feels quite convincing. Certainly, both characters are likable and work well together as a team. But the actual romance is never particularly breathtaking or impassioned. Which would be fine if the movie had more throat-cutting and less awkward moments where the two main characters almost kiss.

The mystery is laughably easy to deduce which, for me, just added to a rather average reading fare.
I recommend this book to those that like the idea of assassin-nuns without dealing with the mess and teenagers who want a gateway book to the historical romance genre.

Check out our joint review of this book on Cuddlebuggery