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I have a huge amount respect for Kalie Reid, she was one of the first people I ever followed on TikTok, and I must admit that I came to this book with higher expectations than with which I might usually approach a debut novel. The Sacred Space Between starts strong, and Reid shows a keen attention to detail and advanced sentence-level craft from page one.

In a small dark house amidst windswept moors and tricky bogs, a saint lives a life of quiet exile. It is a small life, a half life with few friends, and fewer people he can trust. Soon it will be interrupted. Miles away, in the oppressive shadow of The Abbey a young iconographer is given a new assignment: paint Jude, the exiled saint, and earn her promotion. But this icon represents more than Maeve can possibly understand, and Jude is more beautiful, more broken, and more brilliant than she could have imagined. Together they must uncover the secrets of The Abbey, and soon, because if there is one thing The Abbey loves more than a saint, its a martyr.

This is a mechanically excellent novel, in many ways, but I also felt it suffered for its brevity, I wish there was more exposition, a greater explanation and establishment of The Abbey and how it plays into the wider world. This was a novel with the makings of fantasy excellence, which I think sacrificed some of that in favour of being a romance – this is not necessarily a criticism, as the novel is clearly shelved in that Romantasy space, but I do think there was tremendous unrealised potential here, and I wish Reid had unpacked the world a bit more.

Having said that, the romance between Jude and Maeve was exceptionally well-penned. I do think there was an over-reliance on physicality (he / she whirled, he / she grabbed the other, he / she touched the other’s face) which could become a bit clunky in highly emotive passages, but the chemistry and care between the two was touching and felt very based in reality. I felt Reid also handled the limitations, guilt and pressures of these characters in a way that felt naturalistic, and commented on the trauma of oppressive religious regimes, without taking on the contrivance of authorial-mouthpiece-dom. Reid excels at character work, and the relationships throughout The Sacred Space Between are very well written, very believable, and unfold in reasonable ways.

I also have to applaud Reid’s twists, even if you saw something coming, she was able to add a new and fresh sting to the tail, which always pulled everything together.

The final few chapters, both the climax of the story and the aftermath, felt hard-won, and nicely brought the tale to an end. This was a true stand-alone, one which gave us the closure and light needed after a tale which was, in many places, heavy and message filled.

Overall a good read, with excellent characters, but one which I think left me with a lot of questions, and more unsatisfied than I had hoped. 3 stars.