Grave Mercy is the recipient of the Booklist Editors' Choice: Books for Youth of in 2012-2013,[1] and has been well received according to fan reviews.

A fourth book, Courting Darkness, which continues the story of Sybella in France, was published in 2019.

[3] Grave Mercy is set in a fictionalized fifteenth-century Brittany, at a time when the nation was struggling to maintain its independence from France.

[4] 14-year-old peasant, Ismae Rienne, is feared and abused by her father and fellow villagers after she refused to succumb to the poison her mother drank to attempt to abort her in the womb, and left her with a large scar down her back.

The nuns reveal her immunity to poison and her ability to talk to spirits as they gave her a choice that directed her path into the royal courts.