Megan Campisi proves herself to be a very imaginative writer in this fantastic novel set in an alternative Tudor England. The main character and narrator is May, a strong, determined and resourceful 14 year old whom I was rooting for from the start. Having been imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread the orphaned May is condemned to be a 'Sin Eater' living on the outskirts, of society, shunned and feared by all, with the job of listening to the dying reveal their sins. Sin Eaters then have to let the household know the foods associated with the confessed sins and eat them in order that they will take the dead person's sins onto themselves and allow the dead person to go to the Maker rather than to 'Eve' (the world in the novel's equivalent of Satan).,
Part of the novel's appeal for me was in the creation of this slightly alternative world with Queen Bethany, the Virgin Queen, on the throne and those around her attempting to keep the Eucharistians, the Old Religion, from inheriting the throne. Campisi plays with mythology, history, religion, superstition and folklore, blending, for example, slightly changed traditional nursery rhymes and tales into her novel. May does not always know the names of the characters she encounters and gives them her own names based on physical characteristics. I found this a great way of knowing who exactly was being talked about in a book with many characters.
When May as a Sin Eater is called to the Castle (home of the Queen) she becomes aware of mystery and intrigue surrounding the Queen and those close to her. She determines to get to the bottom of this intrigue, risking her life on the way, meeting several memorable characters and finding her own version of freedom.
Overall a thoroughly enjoyable read and I hope to see more from Megan Campisi soon.
I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

This book , set in a time which closely mirrors Elizabethan England,tells the story of May Owens who is forced to become a Sin Eater as a punishment for stealing. The Sin Eater eats food after someone dies to represent their sins and ensure they don't go to Hell. Before a person died, they confessed their sins to the Sin Eater and specific foods were provided by the family according to the sins confessed.
When May is called to the Queen's castle to hear the confession of a dying woman, she is given food which says the woman killed a royal baby but the woman hadn't confessed to this. She realises that the woman had been poisoned. When she starts to investigate she becomes involved in a murder mystery which threatens her life too.
I enjoyed elements of this book and the characters May meets on her journey of discovery. I liked the alternative Tudor world the author created. Apparently sin eaters really existed-who knew?May is an interesting,sparky heroine and I really wanted her to succeed.
A different sort of book for me but enjoyable. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in return for an honest review which reflects my own opinion.

May Owens is a young orphan girl who steals some bread. Her story is set in a fantasy age which has many parallels to the Tudor times. Her punishment is to become a sin eater, feared by the majority, her tongue is marked and she wears a collar so people know who she is. In her new role she must be silent, listen to the confessions of the dying and eat food appropriate to their sins. May lives with another sin eater who dies in a way which arouses her suspicion and she makes a vow to solve the mystery.
This is a great page turner and a really fascinating read. A brilliant and entertaining book, one that I really didn't want to end!
Thank you to Megan Campisi, Net Galley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven

Original , I mean, who has ever heard of Sin Eaters ? Dark , creepy , funny in places. What more could you want from a book !

Well, I would of liked the characters to have been developed more.. But, this is a really really enjoyable book and well worth reading. 3.5 stars for me

I will honest and satay I don’t think this was a book for me. I enjoyed aspects of it but it didn’t interest me. I kept putting it down then forcing myself to pick it back up. I really enjoyed the suspenseful gothic atmosphere but I have no idea what was going off. The plot fell flat to me and there’s a lot of details. I loved the premise of a sin eater but I expected it to be more fantasy based.
Overall it just wasn’t for me.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley
This book was in an email from NetGalley and not having many books on my shelf I decided to take a punt on this one. I wasn't at all sure if it would be "my thing" or not. Turns out it was absolutely my thing and a stonking good read.
May Owen is a young girl, orphaned in her early teens who becomes a sin eater as a punishment for stealing bread. I confess to only having a vague notion as to what a sin eater was so found it intriguing. The book is set in the time of Elizabeth 1, referred to in the book as Queen Bethany, I presume to give you a sense that the story is about a real person but clearly it is fiction. From the beginning as May begins her journey I was completely captivated by her story. The chapters are named after foods eaten for different sins. The characters are mostly all given wonderful names like Mush Face or Black Fingers. There are quite a few characters but it is easy to understand their place in the plot. May gradually uncovers a web of deceit, lies, family secrets and murder which she tries in her own way to understand and put right. It is very evocative of the era and the beliefs at the time. I really liked the way the plot unravelled. As May learnt more so did we. The book is very much through her eyes. I really liked May and wanted things to end well for her.
This is a very different book, unlike a lot of books you'll ever read which made it more of a pleasure.. It paints a very vivid picture of life then and you can almost smell the squalor, the foods, the rancid air emanating from the pages. I did like the language and the use of old fashioned words but found that a lot of them had no explanation when you searched, I do feel that this would be a helpful addition
A 5 star read- no question
Review posted to Amazon and Goodreads

Wonderful, just wonderful. The author brings the era to life filling the senses with the mouthwatering and the noxious alike. A time of cruelty and ignorance and certainly not a time to be born poor. Silent and despised, the main character identifies a wrongness for which her ‘teacher’ is put to death. A mystery unfolds with the juxtaposition of two environments: the majestic and the squalid.

A book that will stay with me for some time and possibly one to be read again.

The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi

May Owens is caught stealing a loaf of bread and is punished. She is sentenced to become a sin eater. A sin eater must eat the foods that symbolise the sins of the dying in order to absolve them and allow their souls to be released to heaven. May is forced into a dark and gruesome life where she must mature quickly to understand the death of her mentor and solve the mystery of the deer hearts.

Sin eaters were in existence right up until the 19th century and apparently were especially prevalent in Wales. (Honestly this book will send you on a Google rabbit hole)
Campisi takes this bit of history and imagines a world that depends upon it’s existence, creating a historical fantasy. The novel is set at an unspecified time in history but strongly resembles 16th century reformation in England. I don’t know why it wasn’t just set there... I felt the novel lacked some grounding because of this. I also struggled with some of the character names and felt they were too childish.

The book is described as being a cross between The Handmaid’s Tale and Alice in Wonderland. This is misleading. It’s not a feminist novel or a modern classic. I’m not sure why we need to set false expectations by comparing a debut to other books.

Overall I was disappointed and didn’t finish the book.

May was just 14 when she stole a loaf of bread which led to her punishment. She was branded and a collar sealed on her neck. She was now a Sin Eater, never allowed to speak again except when hearing the confessions of the dying. Following death she will eat foods that relate to the sins of the dead. She releases of their sins and takes them into herself, never to be spoken again. Not a life one would choose.
At an ‘eating’ she realises there is food relating to a sin that was not confessed and the person was poisoned. How can she find out why and will it put her life in danger?
Totally brilliant book, loved every page and all the characters in it.

May Owens is a 'gabby goose', but after the death of her parents she has no-one left to chatter to. This proves to be the least of her worries when she is caught half-starved and stealing food. Will she be burnt, hung, or whipped for her crime? Worse. She will live a life where her hunger will be a distant past but one that will be marked by silence and solitude instead. Shunned and feared in society, May is to be the next sin eater. She will spend the rest of her days consuming the food embodiments of the deceased's crimes, so they can meet their maker free from sin, and it is for May to live with the weight of their crimes against her soul and upon her lips, instead.

This was super interesting, even if it wasn't my usual type of read. I read a little before bed every night and it was the perfect evening story for me - interesting enough that I looked forward to it all day, but lacking the high thrills that would keep me awake into the early morning hours. My somewhat ambivalent rating stems from this merely being not wholly the book for me. Historical fiction is a genre I have read much from, yet am still searching for what suits my reading tastes, inside of it. This read was a little less Gothic in tone than I anticipated, but was a fascinating historical insight to a role and society I knew little of, nonetheless.

Sin eaters are real - they consume ritual meals in order to carry the sins of the deceased.

This story documents May, condemned by the brass collar around her neck, and a tattooed tongue, to live as a sin eater - feared by all those around her, yet central to theit absolution and death.

May soon realises that alongside the fear she creates, and her consequent shunning from society, she is actually privileged by the access to personal sins she is given. The story soon becomes a murderous and bloodthirsty tale, and a really compelling read.

Loved the language of the story, loved the story, found the people real, enticing and entertaining. All in all a thoroughly worthwhile use of time as it kept me drawn in until the very last word.

The religious parallels are many as are the very real vices of (wo)man then as now and all drawn together to make a tale that never loses its pace.

Get the book, invest your time and see if it ends with you too having a smile on your face.

Although never specifically clear this is a novel based upon 16 century England at which time superstition dictated that the deceased would only enter heaven if cleansed by a sin eater absorbing their sins. Food was attributed to various sins which sin eaters were under duress to eat. The nature of the job and task ensured the sin eaters became virtually pariahs of their parish. The punishment for stealing a loaf of bread led to our young 14 year old orphan heroine taking up the role of sin eater. What ensues is a historical novel with poetic licence to change names facts and places ensuring a worthwhile read related to misdeeds that only our silent and troubled protagonist is privy too. Not sure why England, the Queen at that time and other details had to have name changes as perhaps the story would have related more acutely if linked directly to real people and places. Thank you to publisher and NetGalley for this advanced copy.

Loved this book. I was somehow surprised it was an American author but I felt her understanding of past folklore and the importance of heredity for the monarch was extremely well documented.
Great characters especially May and also the inner court of Queen Bethany (Good Queen Bess the Virgin Queen obviously is the influence). Perhaps there was too much emphasis on the dirt and disease of the place although the richness of court and the tapestries lifted the Royal part.
I liked the use of nursery rhymes adapted for the eating of sins and that many like 'Ring a ring of roses' which was chanted around the time of the plague have their origins in past witchcraft and folklore.
"I can't be cursed. I am a curse" says May and yet through the treason and the murder plot she makers her presence of greatness beyond the position in which she finds herself at the start.
Very enjoyable.

May is a Sin Eater - condemned to eat the sins of the dead and walk unseen through life as a pariah. Each sin has its own foodstuff that May must eat and in so doing, she takes on the sins of the other person.

Set in an alternative version of the time of Elizabeth I, this novel deals with poverty and cruelty and the punishments meted out to women who step out of line or deviate from the norm. May opens her house to a variety of odd characters, all outcasts like her who attract society's disgust.

Through eating the sins of a woman at the court of Queen Bethany, May discovers an intrigue - foods suggesting the commission of child murder are included in the fare presented. Her mentor, the former Sin Eater, refused to eat these foods and was imprisoned. May determines to find out the secrets hidden in the language of food.

A combination of alternative history, courtly spite, doomed love and a whodunnit (as well as a what-was-done) The Sin Eater is an unique novel. Combining both gritty reality and elements of the fantastical, it is the perfect book for readers of historical fiction and alternative reality. Characterisation is excellent - unusual characters come to life on the page and the strange world of the novel is easily entered into.

Beautifully written, it holds the attention throughout and, though the end felt a little rushed, it is one of the books I have most enjoyed recently.

The Sin Eater

Recently orphaned fourteen-year-old May Owens steals a loaf of bread and is sentenced to be a Sin Eater.

A Sin Eater is women’s punishment for the sins of Eve; they t live on the fringes of society, speaking to no one; listening to death bed confessions, and eating the sins of the dead. They really did exist in medieval times and it really was a devastating sentence for stealing a loaf of bread.

But, being a Sin Eater opens new doors for May. She gains access to the Royal Palace and hears the sins of one of Queen Bethany’s entourage (Think Elizabeth 1st Royal Court). And surprised that a deer heart is on the coffin of the dead woman. The food of a sin not confessed. Her mentor, the old Sin Eater refuses to eat the food as it was not confessed, and is tortured to death for this refusal. May realises her options and eats the Deer Heart but realises that there is a scandal and intrigue afoot. Who put the Deer Heart on the coffin and why?

May finds herself in a whodunnit, with friends that she picks up on the way helping her. May is a likeable character, she in intelligent and plucky and uses her position on the fringes of society to gain access to her advantage. In fact, when I came to the end of this novel my first thought was, I hope there is going to be second one as it was a good read, and I don’t like leaving it there.

Thank you to Netgalley, and the publisher for an advance copy in return for my honest review.

Set in England in the sixteenth-century social care and a welfare system are hundreds of years away. So when orphaned May is hungry, when hungry really meant that she hadn't eaten anything at all, not just peckish, she stole a loaf of bread. Fourteen-year-old May was captured by the baker's son and put into prison with about 20 other girls, who had committed various crimes, waiting for their fate from the court.
When you know how harsh these sentences are for such crimes it really makes you realise how desperate these young girls are. Some head for the gallows while everyone else is sentenced except May. May is summoned and told that she is to become a sin eater. Sin eaters are the bottom of the pecking pile, shunned and looked down on as vile creatures but everyone needs a sin eater when they were on their death beds. Each of their sins was represented by different foods and as the dying person confessed their sins the foods were left for the sin eater to eat them away. At the front of the book, you can read what sin different foods represented. It is fascinating.
May was marked so that everyone would know what she was. One thing was for sure, she would never be hungry again. She was sent to live with another sin eater to learn the trade. Everyone from the poor to the highest needed to confess their sins. In high places, there were literally secrets to die for.
It is hard to believe that this is a debut novel. The historical detail of the era is spot on, the attitudes and cruelty of the time shocking. There were punishments that were horrific, lack of care for children sickening and superstitions that people feared. It made for a dark read most of the time but I loved how the story twisted. The second half of the book went from fascinating to jaw-dropping. I loved the historical figures that were in the story and the consequences.
This really is a must-read. Brilliant new author, can't wait to see what else she brings out.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Wow! Where can I start with this book? It's probably the best book that I have read in a long time, and I am so pleased that I got the opportunity to read it. The premise of this novel, I'm sure it would attract a wide range of readers. The whole book was well written, and I think the author Megan Campisi is a natural at crafting a well-rounded story that hooked me in from the first page. I really look forward to reading more of her work.

I really enjoyed The Sin Eater and I was surprised to read that they actually existed many years ago.This is the story of May ,a fourteen year old orphan who is sentenced to be a Sin Eater for stealing some bread .Set in the 16th century this book is dark ,atmospheric and gripping and also very different to the usual historical reads .I liked May very much, what a dreadful punishment for a young girl !!! I was hoping something good would happen to her .A very enjoyable read .many thanks to the Publisher the Author and NetGalley for my copy in return for an honest review .

I'm afraid the Kindle ARC of this book came out so badly on my device that I was unable to read it. The chapters were all chopped up and all over the place! But it seemed like an interesting premise.