Sweet Reviews: The Rotting Room by Viggy Par Hampton

"Sister Rafaela, a newcomer to the cloistered Sisters of Divine Innocence, yearns for redemption from her horrific past. However, her new abbey, bound by a vow of silence and a disturbing burial ritual, hides its own sinister secrets.

When a mysterious stranger arrives and dies soon after, her body resists decomposition, sparking fevered claims of sainthood among the nuns… but Rafaela suspects something far darker.

As the abbey teeters on the edge of madness, Rafaela and local priest Father Bruno race to uncover whether the Sisters of Divine Innocence are graced by a divine miracle—or consumed by unspeakable evil."

First of all, poor Rafaela. This character pulled on my heart strings in a way I havn't felt in a while!

This is a case of unreliable narator to the highest degree. Throughout the entire novel, Rafaela is going back and forth with trusting her own senses and thinking she has lost her mind, and---more seriously to her---lost her god.

We meet Rafaela on her first day at her new abbey in Barcelona. She has a very sordid past, with her family, and with the Rafaelites---her previous sisterhood. The Archbishop had to pull some strings to even find her a place that would take her after what happened at the last abbey. Immediately, we are shown the rotting room, known as The Chamber of Divine Decomposition, where the bodies of the sisters go when they die. Yes, you heard me correctly. The bodies of the deceased sisters from the abbey are placed in a humid room, in stone chairs with a hole cut in the seat, where their bodies decompose at an accelerated rate and the "drippings" are collected in buckets below them.

Rafaela is of course curious as to why this is a thing. The Mother Superior explains to her that it is an ancient custom in lieu of burial and the "drippings" are holy and must be collected. Flash forward to her first shift in the bottling room and she is scooping a disgusting liquified sludge into small bottles which the abbey then sells to the pilgrims who come to the abbey looking to buy a tincture which allegedly erases sin.

Rafaela puts two and two together and deduces that the Sisters of Divine Innocence are collecting liquified corpse juice and selling it for profit. Are the people using it as a salve?? Are they DRINKING it?? Rafaela goes back and forth in her mind trying to figure out what is true and what is only her imagination. Is she being suspicious and seeing things like she supposedly had when she was a young child and again with the Rafaelites?

Then a strange Sister, who claims to be from England where they are shutting down religious orders left and right, shows up sick and seeking shelter with them. The Mother reluctantly lets her come in and then everything really goes downhill.

Enter Father Bruno, a young priest who takes a low key sinful liking to Rafaela, who does mass and confession every morning for the sisters wants to help Sister Rafaela but is plagued with his own doubts.

This is a roller coaster of a ride and after THAT ending, I AM NOT OKAY.

Please, everyone, pick this one up, read it, and then come join my support group.

5/5 but I'm upset about the ending still so 😳/5 hahah

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Where to find The Rotting Room by Viggy Par Hampton: Amazon https://a.co/d/bq5LXfU