Too Blessed to Stress

by Alli Hoff Kosik

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

For fans of Bad Summer People and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, four influencers begin to suspect their mega-church's new pastor isn’t as devoted as he seems, and must decide if exposing him is worth revealing their own secrets.

Camryn, Savannah, Trishy, and Kristin are #blessed. As influencers at the trendiest megachurch in town, Moving Word, the quartet is committed to sharing everything from modest (but stylish!) clothing tips to advice on finding the godliest man possible. Across platforms (#synergy), they show just how easy it is to be a modern, Christian woman—especially if you use their discount codes. 
 
But behind their veneer (and veneers), the truth isn’t quite so picture perfect. Despite her popular lifestyle videos, Camryn is barely making ends meet. Savannah struggles to break free of her reality TV upbringing and start a family of her own, while Trishy attempts to leave her less-than-holy past behind. And Kristin, the group’s youngest member, isn’t finding it as easy to fit in as their color-coordinated outfits make it seem. 
 
When Moving Word’s charming leader, Pastor Kyle, and his ridiculously perfect wife, Cassidy, decide to host a lavish fundraiser to put the megachurch further on the map, Camryn, Savannah, Trishy, and Kristin find themselves knee deep in the most important event since the Last Supper. But the brighter the spotlight, the darker the shadows — and when the women discover an incendiary secret at the heart of Moving Word, they are forced to confront questions of hypocrisy, exposure, and how to wield one’s power for good.

Release date: March 3, 2026

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 304

Sample

Kristin had been the one to draw up the original event itinerary—and then to run it by the right people for notes, revise a few particulars, and finally have it approved—so she knew immediately that something was not going to plan. The run of show she’d written and rewritten called for a presentation of two minutes at the most—enough time to welcome the crowd and get them excited, but not so much that it would distract them from the dozens of carnival rides and food trucks that had been moved into the massive Moving Word parking lot. Kristin had arranged for those, too, happy to know that guests would have the chance to move directly from the sweetness of the speech to the sweetness of caramel apples, kettle corn, and other equally syrupy seasonal treats.

Earlier in the week, she’d also watched as Kyle and Cassidy practiced their remarks. Thank you so much to our local sponsors for helping us get this special event organized! We are proud to be part of this community and to be the church home for so many of you. Let’s eat, drink, ride some rides, and praise the Lord. It’s fall, y’all! Wedged into the corner of Kyle’s office, Kristin had tracked their lines against the printout in front of her. The pastor was upbeat, as usual; his wife with an appropriately performative edge of treacle to her voice that left the building as soon as she’d run through the script a few times and entirely ignored Kristin’s positive feedback.

Less than an hour before the couple was due onstage—undaunted by Cassidy’s moods and committed as ever to her tasks as office assistant—Kristin had checked in with the Welshes while they tested their mics, proffering church-branded Stanleys of water and fresh printouts of the itinerary. While Kyle had graciously accepted Kristin’s offerings, Cassidy had rolled her eyes and batted Kristin’s carefully paginated and laminated schedule away.

According to the itinerary, the worship team—composed of musicians from their late teens to their early fifties, mostly misfits who had always been too cool for church and too square for real rock bands—would play a few songs after the Welshes walked off the outdoor stage, erected just for the day. Buoyed by the melody and the crisp autumn air, kids would enjoy the rides, adults would fellowship with other churchgoers, and everyone would have some good, wholesome fun. Kristin’s first big feat of coordination since joining the team at Moving Word would be a success. Cassidy Welsh might even decide to like her.

But now, Kyle was lingering on the stage after the first round of applause from the large group of onlookers. Kristin and the rest of the congregation had grown used to the pastor improvising and making jokes, just as they’d grown used to—even grown to love—his fashionable sneakers and graphic tees printed with Christian wordplay (NOT TODAY, SATAN; NO OMGS; LIVING ON A PRAYER). His tone on the occasion of the fall carnival, however, seemed oddly serious, a marked departure for the usually easygoing pastor whose popularity was rooted not only in his sermons but also in his readiness to engage in a spontaneous dance-off with the youth group.

“We’re not just here to ring in a new season, though,” he said, putting his arm around Cassidy, who now looked surprisingly grim to attend an event with a ring toss, in spite of the work of a professional makeup artist. “As you know, human trafficking has become an increasingly urgent matter in recent years, especially with all the illegal immigration going on. My wife and I feel called to fight this with all of our God-given strength. You may remember that we’ve done a few smaller collections in the past for an anti-trafficking organization called ProtectUS.”

Kristin was familiar with ProtectUS. Shortly after starting her job, she’d been tasked with designing flyers encouraging members of the church to attend a bake sale on behalf of the nonprofit. In hopes of doing a little something extra to impress her bosses, she’d spent several hours poring over ProtectUS’s educational resources so that she could really deliver in the language on the posters. Her parents railed frequently against the evils of human trafficking as it was depicted on cable news, and they’d been more than thrilled to purchase a few dozen cinnamon rolls in the name of fighting the good fight and in taking a philosophical stand against the politicians they suspected were perpetrators. Kristin was twenty-two years old, but it was like the Girl Scouts all over again, her capacity to make an impact distilled however temporarily into handily packaged bundles of sweets.

Kyle continued. “After a lot of prayer, Cassidy and I have decided to rally the power of our growing congregation to lift up this organization even more. Between now and Christmas, we will be mounting an epic fundraiser for ProtectUS to show what happens when people of faith come together for a meaningful cause! Are y’all ready to hear about our fundraising goal?”

The gathered crowd of Moving Word members and their guests applauded tentatively, then grew louder as Kyle leaned forward with a hand cupped over one ear. Shifting from grim to girlish fast enough to give Kristin whiplash, Cassidy threw her arms out toward the audience, her flouncy white blouse lifting to reveal a strip of toned abdomen. As the one responsible for managing the scheduling of sessions with Cassidy’s personal Pilates instructor—a woman named Veronica who traveled to the pastor’s home to conduct private classes on a Reformer machine she’d gifted them—Kristin knew how many hours had gone into that sliver of perfect physique. Many hours. Countless hours, probably.

“Over the next few weeks, our church family will be raising—are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Kyle stirred up the air around him with the hand not holding the microphone. There were more cheers from the crowd, the kind of excitement that pulsed in the air like humidity that would inspire hairstyle-related hemming and hawing among the women in the group. As usual, Kyle’s hair was holding perfectly under the pressure of his congregation and the friends and family they’d invited to enjoy the day.

“With God on our side, we’re going to raise five hundred thousand dollars!” he bellowed.

Kristin resisted the instinct to cover her ears as the loudest cacophony yet rose up from the carnival-goers, entirely drowning out the tinkling melodies of the rented rides.

“We can’t think of a better way to celebrate the start of this very special fundraiser than with a big party like this one,” Cassidy added into her own microphone, beaming cherubically at her husband. In spite of the woman’s resemblance to a Christmas angel in that moment, Kristin would hate to be in caroling distance of her should the newly announced goal not be met. “And we’re going to celebrate the end of it with another one! The week before Christmas, Moving Word will be hosting its first major gala event, where we’ll announce our fundraising total—which I’m sure will be the full five hundred thousand dollars, if not more—and praise the Lord for this opportunity to spread the Word during the season of Jesus’s birthday. We’re calling it the Gala for Goodness.”

Kyle bobbed his head beside her like one of the sports figurines Kristin’s dad kept on the dashboard of his car. “You’ll find more details in your inboxes and in the Moving Word app as soon as things get wrapped up today, but you can get started by giving at the stations around the perimeter of the parking lot.”

Kristin craned her neck to see the stations Kyle was referring to. Who had set those up? And when?

“Every cent counts, but don’t get me wrong—we’ll gladly take the big bucks!” Kyle paused for laughter—and got it. “Gala tickets will go on sale later this week, too, and we promise the event will be worth the price tag. But that’s enough yakking from me. Let’s ride some rides and eat some cotton candy and do some good!”

The worship team’s band began playing so suddenly that it made Kristin jump. Kyle clapped his hands not quite on beat. The band had started too early! Or were they too late? Regardless of how right or wrong their timing was, the music—this song featuring bongo drums and maracas—was exciting the crowd even further. Between the spontaneous jam session, the Welshes’ passionate praise hands onstage, and the news of another big party, everyone’s energy had ratcheted up a few notches. More folks had abandoned the rides and the food trucks to congregate in the mass of people, a mass that had started jumping up and down to the beat of the drums. Others were streaming out to the giving stations, reaching into their purses and pockets for cash to shove into the Plexiglas boxes that had, as far as Kristin could tell, appeared there like manna from heaven.

The Gala for Goodness would be a lot of work for Kristin. Like, a lot of work.

More work than she’d known to expect when she’d accepted the gig at Moving Word—and more work than she felt qualified to do. The position had seemed fairly simple in the job description Kristin’s mom had passed along right before graduation. She could manage schedules and coordinate meetings and play point person for church events, but she’d never been to a gala. She’d barely been to a fraternity party. Where, exactly, was the line between a gala and a party? What would it take to impress Cassidy at an event that obviously mattered so much to her? A sizable chunk of the work ahead of her, she worried, was in figuring out the answers to those questions.

But it would be a lot of work on behalf of something meaningful, she reasoned. A lot of work in support of a good cause, which was what made her still feel called to church. And a lot of work that would, hopefully, make her even more invaluable to the Welshes and the rest of the church. Left with only herself as an opponent after a lifetime of competing with others in the pool, Kristin wondered if there might be a raise or a promotion waiting for her should the fundraiser and the gala run successfully—and less than a year after she’d joined the team. The glimmer of those possibilities was enough to take the edge off the infinitely long to-do lists already writing themselves in her head.

The hard work would begin at the office, so Kristin did her best to enjoy the fair’s festivities. The funnel cake stand was the last place she would have expected to run into Camryn Lee Cady—and yet, there she was, waiting to gossip as soon as Kristin stepped back from the folding table where shakers of powdered sugar had been set up alongside squeeze bottles of chocolate and caramel sauces, visibly melting in the Carolina heat. “Hey,” she chirped, grabbing Kristin by the shoulder with a prettily manicured hand and guiding her to a nearby picnic table. As always, Cam looked perfect and perky, dressed for the evening in a pair of jeans and a floral top with puffy straps that draped artfully off her delicate shoulders. Kristin was relieved to find that she’d managed to sit down without spilling any of the toppings from her dessert on herself. Her chambray button-down and white shorts weren’t anywhere near as fashionable as Camryn’s outfit, but she’d prefer not to ruin them—or to draw unnecessary attention to herself with a mess. “Did you know anything about the gala?” Camryn asked. Her hushed tone seemed silly given that they were in open air and nowhere near any obvious eavesdroppers, to say nothing of the far from sinister nature of the subject at hand.

Kristin shook her head, dabbing the sugar off her fingers. “I didn’t,” she insisted. “I would have told you.”

“Of course you would have,” Cam said, nodding and staring into the distance. “That’s why you’re our insider.” She winked, a move Kristin was familiar with just as much from real life as from Cam’s videos.

“Right,” Kristin agreed. She eyed her rapidly cooling funnel cake, mindful of staying focused on what Camryn had to say despite her hunger. Cam had, after all, trusted Kristin to join her personal pet project, the Moral Mavens Mainframe. Mavens legend had it that Camryn had come up with the name for the group’s leadership team during an otherwise lackluster IT training for her day job when a joke about the company’s computer systems had piqued her interest.

“Well, I haven’t seen anyone else yet, which is weird since Savannah and Trishy both said they would be here,” Cam said, looking around. “Anyway, I know the focus of the gala is ProtectUS—and it totally should be—but we should also talk to Cassidy about how we can get the Mavens involved. I know we’re not officially affiliated with the church or anything, but everyone knows how valuable we can be.”

“Alright,” Kristin agreed. “Let me know how I can—”

“I definitely will,” Cam said. “Can I have a bite of this?” She pointed at Kristin’s funnel cake.

Unsure of what else to do, Kristin nodded, guiding the paper plate toward Cam.

“Wait, actually, do you mind if I just take the whole thing with me?” Camryn asked. “This is going to be so messy to carry around. I can pay you back for it later. I just have so many ideas to talk to people about. The gala’s going to need a theme!” She gazed wistfully out at the parking lot, now lit by the soft colored bulbs of the rides and snack stands under the darkening sky.

Kristin smiled. “Take it,” she said. “I’ll get another one.”

“You’re the best,” Cam replied, leaning forward to kiss Kristin on the cheek, where Kristin could feel the sticky ghost of lip gloss.

Cam was off and running into the crowd before Kristin could say goodbye, a yellow crossbody purse dancing off her shoulder as she went. The line for funnel cakes was longer now, but Kristin joined anyway. Even if her big night out of the house amounted to a work-mandated carnival, she should enjoy it. She should get the second funnel cake. She should pat herself on the back for the first evening in a long time spent on something besides indulging her mother’s true crime documentary obsession. She was out! She was on the verge of helping people do big things with one of the coolest churches in town.

She also really wanted a bite of that funnel cake.

The only thing that would taste nearly as good as the single bite she’d had of her last helping would be her success with the Mavens.

Zoodles had long been played out, and Camryn knew it. Her favorite food influencers—each of them a wealth of kitchen knowledge and high-end appliances in their custom kitchens—had portended their demise somewhere around 2019, when the art of turning zucchini into a sad substitute for pasta had gone from a weird underground movement isolated to the gluten-free crowd to a mainstream culinary technique championed by weight-loss experts and meat-eating foodies alike. As soon as the trend had saturated the Pinterest boards of suburban mommies wielding sleek discount zoodlers, it was over. Cam needed the recipe development team at 12th Pine to accept the fact that zoodles no longer merited top billing on their menu, and fast. It wasn’t good for business—and Cam really, really needed business to be good.

“Are we absolutely sold on the zucchini noodle dish for the special seasonal menu? Is that nonnegotiable?” Cam asked Margo Toll, who, as head of the small but mighty marketing team for 12th Pine, was her boss and, in theory, equally invested in the company’s success. Thanks to its fresh fare and smart, splashy direct-to-customer marketing—which Cam freely took full credit for—the farm-to-table fast casual restaurant had grown to five locations in the Charlotte metro area over the last few years.

Margo chewed on the long pinkie fingernail of one hand as she paged through the recipe development team’s proposal with the other. The glossy pages were intended as a preliminary pitch of late winter offerings and were studded with high-resolution photos of potential new dishes as they’d been assembled in the drafty test kitchen downtown. Margo and Cam were sharing a table in 12th Pine’s flagship location, a converted brewery in Dilworth.

“Those guys can be so temperamental,” Margo replied, flicking her eyes up at Cam as she took a sip of kombucha from a hammered copper mug. She was referring to the recipe developers, a group of sour men with silver beards and full sleeves of tattoos under their aprons who did not appreciate feedback about how well—or not—their food would play to the social media savvy crowd who patronized 12th Pine.

“Could we talk them down to something at least a little more current? Carrots are boring, but still better than zoodles. Sweet potato or butternut squash, maybe? Good for the season? Or beets! Beets are still cool. Great color.”

“And beets are current?” Margo asked.

Cam nodded. “Compared to zoodles? Absolutely,” she said. She would have bet her next paycheck on it, but she was happy not to. “They’re this decade’s kale, but more photogenic. Better for the girlies with sensitive tummies, too.”

Margo nodded slowly, still staring down at the pages resting on the reclaimed wood table in front of her. Her red hair was piled on top of her head in its usual messy bun, her V-neck accessorized with a seersucker blazer and a set of layered gold necklaces that Cam—who loved love—knew she’d received as a gift from her girlfriend in celebration of a recent anniversary. “Beets. Maybe,” she said. “I need to think about it. Give me the weekend before I push back.”

If Camryn were in charge, she would commit to courses of action much faster. She would also overhaul the chain’s aesthetic, abandoning its industrial chic look in favor of neutral interiors, but that was neither here nor there. Cam loved Margo’s creative vision, but she didn’t have a lot of patience with her manager’s indecisiveness. They’d planned to meet in Dilworth to have a late lunch and finalize their feedback on the proposed menu so it could be passed along to the test kitchen team with plenty of time for changes to be made. If the new items could be styled to look good on social media and had plenty of healthy ingredients—enough, even, to balance out a teeny white wine or Chick-fil-A habit—12th Pine’s existing customer base would be ready to indulge. The restaurant was trying to maintain its aggressive growth track, a feat that would be a whole lot more feasible with a marketing team that felt empowered to comment on whether or not they’d actually be able to market its product to the target demographic.

Camryn knew her way around kind conversation, even if the subject at hand was contentious. Just that summer, she’d singlehandedly spearheaded a campaign at her apartment complex that had resulted in the installation of brand-new air conditioners in every unit. Was the management company excited about making that investment when the talks began? No. Had they even technically agreed to meet with her? No. But Cam had gone in there with statistics about heat stroke and a smile and worked it all out. Margo would have sweated her way through a miserable North Carolina August to avoid the discussion.

“Let me give it some thought. How’s your lunch?” Margo nodded her chin in the direction of Cam’s meal, an earthenware bowl overflowing with quinoa, chickpeas, kale, sweet potatoes, and a few other superfoods.

“It’s good.” Cam nodded, pushing the contents of the bowl around with her fork. Frequent free lunches were a perk of her job at 12th Pine. Manifesting gratitude for this fact—despite her misgivings about potential theological issues with manifestation—she resigned herself to a rain check for her crusade against zucchini noodles, at least until Monday. “Not as good as the grain bowl I had last time, but good. What kind of squash do we think this is? I was thinking maybe acorn but—”

“Camryn? Camryn Lee Cady?”

The voice came from behind Cam, who watched as Margo lost a chunk of salt-and-peppered avocado from the toast she stopped short halfway between the plate and her mouth. Margo’s eyes were fixed on something above Cam’s head: presumably the owner of the voice, whose outburst was no longer a novelty thanks to the increased visibility of the Mavens and the pastors who’d championed them at Moving Word. Camryn turned in her chair and found herself looking up at a trio of girls somewhere in their late teens, each one in some variation of the same matching loungewear set. One girl stood slightly in front of the other two, a big gray sweatshirt tied loosely around her waist, a brown paper bag stamped with the 12th Pine logo in her hand.

“That’s me,” Cam said, smiling up at the girls. With their bright eyes and sincere expressions and eager greeting, she could tell without asking that they were Moral Mavens. No matter their age, it wasn’t hard to recognize a sister in Christ, particularly when, thanks to Instagram, that sister in Christ had a working knowledge of Cam’s life and wasn’t afraid to show it.

Anyone could call themselves one of the Moral Mavens, but there were only four women in the Mavens Mainframe: Savannah Truman, Trishy Collins, Kristin Rae Thatcher, and, of course, Cam herself. For the last year, the Mainframe girls had been stepping up their social media game to call in a sisterhood of believers and encourage even more people to read the Word, walk in faith, invest in themselves with the purchase of tummy-flattening teas and silk eye masks, and follow God’s path for them. Cam thought it was pretty powerful—and it wasn’t just because she’d started it, or because she was the unofficial leader. Leader wasn’t the right word. She’d actually made the rule that no one mention hierarchy. They were all equal.

But Cam had started it.

There were Mavens girls all over Charlotte. Of Camryn’s forty-nine thousand Instagram followers and the fifty thousand and change following the Moral Mavens official account, a sizable number were local. She had met them all over town—shopping for dresses for friends’ weddings, pulsing their tiniest arm muscles in barre class, out on dates with clean-shaven boys, buying ingredients for Christmas cookies at the Whole Foods in Sharon Square. They’d even started showing up regularly at Moving Word, mostly excited to meet Camryn and her friends, but also willing to hear a sermon, add a little—or big—something to the offering plate, and consider membership. Those were the sweetest moments for Cam, of course, but adding the Dilworth 12th Pine location to the list of Mavens meeting places was exciting, a neat blending of her worlds.

“I thought from your hair that it might be you!” the girl said, her smile so big it looked in danger of jumping right off her cheeks. “That’s probably so weird. Sorry. You just have really pretty hair.” She covered her mouth with one hand, a blush creeping out around her eyes. But Cam was pleased. She tended her blond waves every day to ensure they’d be recognizable. “But then I heard your voice, and I totally recognized it. I had to say hi. My friends and I”—here, she gestured to the other girls—“we watch all of your videos and we read all of your posts. We’ve been following you since the beginning. We’re obsessed. Seriously.”

At this, one of the other girls nodded vigorously, her long caramel ponytail bouncing so it caught the light from the copper fixtures hanging above the bar. “Yes. We love you,” she said. “We love your friends. We’ve told, like, everyone at school about you guys. We’ve probably gotten, like, at least two hundred people to follow you.”

“That post you wrote about breakups at the beginning of the year helped me get through a really hard season right before prom,” the third girl chimed in. “My boyfriend dumped me and then did a whole promposal a week later for this girl I’m pretty sure he’d never talked to before that. He made a whole TikTok about—”

The girl standing in front turned to look at her friend. Cam could only see one side of her highlighter-dappled profile, but she could imagine a venomous glare passing from one teenager to the other. Poor things. One day, they’d learn to lift each other up unconditionally, just like Cam and her friends and church family. It was what Cam tried to do with her followers, too, whether through sharing Scripture or offering helpful tips on the most flattering denim for every body type.

“—that’s not important, though. We have to give everyone grace, right? I hope they’re very happy together,” the breakup survivor continued with a nervous laugh. All three of the girls were back to looking sweetly in Cam’s direction. “I just really appreciate you.”

“I’m glad the post helped,” Camryn said. “And I appreciate you, too.” She stood up from her chair and brushed off her midi skirt in case of crumbs from the grain bowl, which was now much less important to her than attending to the young Mavens. She could wrap it up and have the rest for dinner tonight, anyway. It might even stretch for another lunch. It would hardly be the first time she’d squeezed several meals out of a single comped 12th Pine lunch. “Can I give you girls a hug?”

The teenagers nodded up and down and wrapped their arms around Cam in a group embrace. They smelled like candy and perfume, like the more expensive aisles of a drugstore where things were shuttered behind locked sliding glass doors. Cam waited until each of them had pulled away from the hug before stepping back herself.

“Do you think your friend could take a picture of us?” the first girl asked, digging through her metallic fanny pack until her hand emerged holding a phon. . .