BBNYA 2025 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: Saving Grace by Jon McConnell

“Hiding in plain sight kept them alive—until Grace changed everything.”

💖Welcome to my stop on the 2025 BBNYA Semi-Finalist Tour!

The Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) shines a light on the best indie fiction, and I’m thrilled to be part of this celebration. Each year, hundreds of authors submit their books to be read and scored by book bloggers worldwide, leading to sixteen finalists and one overall winner.

Today’s spotlight features Saving Grace by Jon McConnell, one of this year’s semi-finalists! Please join me in congratulating this talented author in the comments below — your support makes such a difference.

---

 💚About BBNYA

The Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) is a yearly competition judged by book bloggers, for book bloggers — and most importantly, for readers who love discovering hidden gems in the indie world.

---

Want to learn more?
📚 Visit the BBNYA Website
🐦 Follow @BBNYA_Official on X (Twitter)
💬 And don’t miss @The_WriteReads, the powerhouse community behind this amazing event.

---

📚 All About the Book

Saving Grace
By Jon McConnell
Published by Absolute Value Publications Inc. on 10/31/2022
Genres: Age: Adult, Horror, Thrillers
Formats: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 362

Middle school English teacher Gabriel Walker always joked that his students were going to kill him; he never thought it might actually happen.

After a mysterious epidemic turns children into psychotic killers who rule the night, the world descends into chaos. Gabriel and a small group of survivors are alive because they hide in plain sight; they broke down their own door, busted in their windows and even took pictures off the wall to make it seem as if the house was abandoned in a rush. The survivors have a system of survival and it works.

But when they run into Grace, who might be the last healthy girl on earth, everything changes.

Source: BBNYA

---

🛒Purchase Links for Saving Grace

[amazon fields ="1926979249" value="thumb"]

Kindle  |  Paperback

If these links don’t route to your region’s Amazon store, please let me know—I’ll happily send you the correct one. Using my links doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps support my site and indie author features. 💖

---

✍️ Meet the Author: Jon McConnell

Jon McConnell is a high school English teacher at Nipomo High School in California. He lives in Orcutt on the Central Coast with his wife and co-author, Dayna, and their two sons, Declan and Ezra.

A lifelong fan of the zombie genre, Jon first fell in love with horror after staying up late with his brothers to watch George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. When he’s not teaching or writing, he enjoys a good romantic comedy and spending time with his family.

Learn more at McConnellWriting.com.

---

📜 MORE 2025 BBNA SEMI-FINALISTS

Check out more of my BBNYA 2025 Semi-Finalist spotlights here:

The Cyclopes’ Eye by Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius

The Strange Grey Everything by Rebecca Crunden

---

🌅 Closing Notes

Congratulations to Jon McConnell on Saving Grace being named a BBNYA 2025 Semi-Finalist! This haunting, high-stakes survival thriller captures the best of indie horror—emotionally grounded, terrifyingly plausible, and impossible to put down.

If you love post-apocalyptic stories with psychological edge and moral complexity, Saving Grace deserves a top spot on your TBR.

---