Review: The Sacred Space Between by Kalie Reid

A devout acolyte trained in iconography, Maeve has dedicated her life to upholding the saints through her artistic talents. Sequestered away at the Abbey, Maeve lives in a constant state of isolation, prayer, and devotion. After a decade in the Abbey and many years honing her craft, the opportunity to replace the lead iconographer, Brigid, is finally within her grasp, until her mentor, Ezra, gives her a daunting task. Far away from the Abbey’s walls a saint lives in exile, defiling the Abbey’s teachings and tainting the miracles of the saints. His name is Jude and he has long lived under the Abbey’s thumb, never far enough to escape its influence. Maeve is tasked twofold: paint an updated likeness of Jude while using her place within his household to acquire information on his wrongdoings. Desperate for a chance to prove herself, Maeve leaves behind the Abbey and travels to Ánhaga, a house on the outskirts of the Goddenwood. There, Maeve meets Jude, and he is nothing a saint should be. For one, he is just a boy dabbling in heretical notions. Second, Jude is intent on driving Maeve away, by any means necessary. When Jude discovers that Maeve possesses the very saintly abilities coveted by the Abbey, he realizes they have more in common than he initially thought. Together they could bring the Abbey to its knees, provided they don’t betray each other and can avoid becoming martyrs themselves.

The Sacred Space Between is a miraculous novel, far exceeding the tainted magic of saints to place an expert brush upon the experiences of loneliness, religious trauma, and the ever constant quest for belonging. With reverent hands Kalie Reid constructs her Abbey, its spires reaching ever upward and its arched cloisters replete with devout acolytes sequestered away to pray and to serve. It is here that Maeve, an iconographer, will be sent out on a mission to spy on a saint in exile and come to uncover the truth of the magic bequeathed to their saintly figures and the rotten center of her faith. Interrogating faith and its power to uplift and to subjugate, Reid’s debut dares to tear away the facade from religion, exposing the lies and the many lives impacted in service to those in power. The Sacred Space Between is about systems of power, yes, but it’s also about the power found in human connection and the moments where we find belonging and kinship with others. It’s a story full of immeasurable yearning—yearning for things to be different, yearning to find your place, for your autonomy, and yearning for the unfriendly exiled saint you are forced to spy upon in an isolated gothic manor house. Kalie Reid’s The Sacred Space Between is exquisitely rendered, drawing readers into the contentious space between a heretical saint and a devout iconographer that is not just reverent but holy.

While The Sacred Space Between is a romantic fantasy, at its heart it is a gothic with all the brooding atmosphere and descriptive imagery to move me unlike any other. The wildswept fog ridden moors on the outskirts of the Ánhaga, its wallpapered walls, and the hidden library of memories all paint a desolate picture of loneliness and melancholy central to Kalie Reid’s larger commentary. The house, Ánhaga, is a physical manifestation of the corruption at the heart of their faith, yet comforting all the same in these small spaces where tainted faith cannot reach. This is felt by Maeve and Jude’s perspectives both, but it is Maeve’s character in particular who presents an aching loneliness and an alienation tied so intrinsically to her beliefs. Her desire to be seen and trusted and remembered is a stark contrast to Jude, whose very faith has been perverted through his sainthood and physical abuse. The greatest desecration of someone’s faith is the abuse through faith itself, from the physical impact of Jude’s torture at the hands of the Abbey figures to the spiritual abuse of Maeve from her mentor, Ezra. Reid’s journey instills the necessity of faith as to question, to be allowed curiosity and have that accepted. But faith, sainthood, and iconography exist in a twisted cycle that exists to satiate the powerful and control those who dare to question the system they are a part of.

In The Sacred Space Between the way to break free lies in the hands of an exiled saint and an iconographer who hate each other (just a little). Trapped together in an isolated house with nothing but their conflicting agendas and personal ghosts for company, Maeve and Jude clash and retreat immediately and boy is the tension magnificent. Reid instills all of my favorite things into this romance, divisive views as a source of greater tension, overwhelming pining, and everyone’s favorite component: romantic yearning. As a lover of conflict in my romances, Maeve and Jude were constructed to drive me insane. Everything is held captive by their differing views as they interact and desire to know more about each other and that in turn only furthers the tension driving them apart. Yet Reid unites Jude and Maeve in a profound loneliness centered around their beliefs, initiating a quest to destroy the Abbey and return the magic siphoned from their saints. With Jude and Maeve’s bond cementing, so does our understanding of this faith and how saintly magic is controlled. Reid ties this all to religious iconography and it’s nothing short of marvelous. Religious iconography already harnesses its own kind of power, but adding in the layer of memory magic, and Reid’s stance is forever ingrained in the very paint used to bind the saints—and their magic, to the church.

The Sacred Space Between is its own artistic masterpiece. One that grabs you with two hands and forces you to look upon all that it has to reveal. For Kalie Reid that is the lasting impacts of religious trauma and abuse and the personal power found in taking something back for yourself. This novel presents many essential ideas around organized religion—how martyrs further religious fanaticism, the danger of blind faith, and the control gained in building someone up from nothing. This connects perfectly into the concept of memory magic harnessed through the iconography of their various saints. Art has power too, and here it acts as a gateway between saint and elder, magic and the believers. Memory in turn, allows these elders to abuse and control with impunity, as there is no one alive with the memory of what was truly done. If memory can be controlled so can these elders shape their acolytes and in effect own them and their faith. I love reading books that cause me to question, the ones that linger for days after I finish reading. This is essential to Kalie Reid’s debut. Even with all the romantic yearning, the kneeling, and the groveling, there is so much to sift through not just on the surface of the narrative, but far beneath. Limned a dark gothic atmosphere, this thought provoking romantic fantasy novel delves far into religious subjugation, iconography, and the weight of sainthood. Fleeting as mist, but made permanent through memory and saintly magic, The Sacred Space Between is one story to remember and find your way back to time and time again (just like Maeve and Jude).

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing the advance review copy.

Trigger warnings (provided by author): blood, death, religious trauma, gaslighting, emotional abuse, child abuse, scars, discussions of past self-harm, fire injury, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts