Sanctity of Sloth - Greta Boris

About the Book

Title: The Sanctity of Sloth
Author: Greta Boris
Genre: Suspense, Mystery
Series: The Seven
There's one thing more dangerous than testifying to a crime—staying silent. 
Locked in the ruins of a California Mission, Abby Travers watches helplessly as a girl dies outside her window. As she struggles between her moral obligation to come forward as a witness, and her commitment to a Medieval religious practice that requires her to retreat from the world, the situation spins out of control. 
Abby's hesitation starts a series of catastrophes. She finds herself at the centre of a deadly cover up where every minute counts and indecision could be fatal. She questions all her beliefs and everyone she knows becomes suspect. To save herself and those she loves, she must break free from her self-imposed prisons of stone and fear. 
The Sanctity of Sloth is a taut, psychological thriller that answers the question: What happens when a good woman does nothing? Fans of Paula Hawkins and A.J. Finn will enjoy this third book in Greta Boris's Seven Deadly Sins Series. 

Author Bio

Greta Boris was raised in Greenwich Village, New York by an opera singing, piano playing, voice coach and a magazine publisher. Her original life plan was to be a famous Broadway actor, singer, and dancer, but when she moved to Laguna Beach, California, she changed her plans due to the commute. Today she writes to inspire, entertain, motivate, and so she can afford nice wine.

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My Review

The premise of this book is 'what happens when a good woman does nothing?' It's an interesting question, but not one that I'm convinced this book answers. Why? Because I'm not particularly of the opinion that the main character, Abby, is a good woman. I'd go as far as to say that most of this book is populated with characters who aren't particularly likeable. That doesn't mean that it is a bad story, or that I didn't find myself totally gripped by it.

Abby is spending forty nights locked in a small room that her father has built in the side of a Californian mission. I'm not really sure what missions are, but obviously some kind of religious structure, Google tells me that they were used by the Spanish for converting the native population to Christianity. Her father hasn't done this as a punishment for Abby, or anything like that. Instead, she is trying to write a book about the Anchorites who lived in small cells in the walls of Churches and Cathedrals in medieval Europe. She does this without the permission of the people who run the Mission, putting her father's job in danger. She also pressures her father, who is against the whole idea, into helping her and doesn't tell the man that she is thinking of marrying that she is doing and where she is going. So far this 'good woman' seems to be self-obsessed and only bothered about what she wants to do.

When she sees a young woman, who is clearly in a bad way, dumped on the grass outside of her cell, she does nothing. While she couldn't have got out, she doesn't try particularly hard, she doesn't shout and scream on the off chance, however remote, of getting help. She stays quiet when the now dead body is discovered and the police arrive. She then pressures her father into claiming to have seen everything that happened. These actions then lead on to the thriller aspects of this book as we try to discover who the girl was, why she was left and by whom.

I was gripped by this story. I have to admit that I wasn't convinced who, if anyone, I wanted to win through. Abby, as I've mentioned is a childish, self-obsessed type and her father enables this behaviour. Her boyfriend Carlos was a little more likeable, but I couldn't really see what he saw in Abby. In any case, I did want to know what was going to happen and where the story would lead. I thought that the idea behind the storyline and the way that the plot played out was very interesting and the book itself was a thoroughly enjoyable read.