The Blessed

Gr 9 Up—This first installment in a planned trilogy features modern characters inspired by the lives of three martyred Catholic saints. It has a promising premise but is dragged down by a slow-moving plot and self-consciously hip language. Agnes, Cecilia, and Lucy all find themselves in Brooklyn's Perpetual Help emergency room Halloween night. Agnes, a Catholic schoolgirl, tried to commit suicide; Cecilia, a gifted indie musician, almost drowned in a puddle; and Lucy, a media-obsessed socialite, overdosed at a club. The three teens don't know one another, but they have in common a sense of unhappiness with their lives. Sebastian, a breathtakingly beautiful young man who was also at the hospital that fateful night, bestows upon each girl a gift of a jeweled chaplet bracelet. On the eve of a cataclysmic three-day storm, the girls end up seeking refuge at the decimated Church of the Precious Blood where they find Sebastian. Over the course of the storm and its aftermath, they learn that they are the namesakes of virgin saints from the third and fourth centuries. As it turns out, Sebastian has escaped from a mental institution and is being pursued by the authorities, in particular by an evil psychiatrist who intends to destroy him and the girls. The violence that erupts in the final chapters is over-the-top and surprising. By the end of the book, readers are still in the dark about the girls' calling and the motivations behind their evil pursuers. Hopefully Hurley will redeem Blessed in the second book and the promising story of the saints will be realized.—Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY