User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
“Look around,” Kiersten says as she stares me dead in the eyes. “We are the only Gods here.”
4 1/2 stars. Wow. This book was hard to put down! And the ending made me really emotional.
The Grace Year is such an exciting mix of horror, survival and the best of YA dystopias from 5-10 years back. It really is like a darker, more feminist version of The Hunger Games. I had a really busy week, but I looked for every opportunity possible to sit down with this book and get sucked back into this ugly patriarchal world. Nothing gets my blood pumping and the pages turning like a heavy dose of infuriating unfairness.
This is one of those rare novels where I think the fictional world actually benefits from some vague world-building. There is something very sinister and claustrophobic about the tiny oppressive world of Garner County, a feeling of wrongness about it, a feeling that you never know quite what is lurking beyond its edges.
In the county, girls are banished to the wilds during their sixteenth year - their "Grace Year" - in order to purge themselves of their dangerous "magic". This magic is said to be an ability to seduce men, lure them to sin and all manner of unsavory things. Once out in the wild, the girls need to survive the elements, evade the poachers who are looking to harvest their body parts, and just not kill each other. All are easier said than done, of course, and especially the latter.
“They can call it magic.
I can call it madness.
But one thing is certain.
There is no grace here.”
You can compare this to many other works - The Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies being the most obvious - but it has a unique flavour that's all it's own.
It's dark and gory. It's very much a tale of survival against the odds. But what is so odd about The Grace Year is that it’s about women going wild, being jealous, viciously hurting each other, and yet it somehow manages to be a celebration of women and the ties between them. Mothers and daughters. Sisters. Friends. It's quite incredible how Liggett takes these women to their very worst so that we can eventually appreciate them at their best.
I loved the whole eating/cannibalism metaphor, too. How patriarchy works because it forces women into a position where they are enemies, and they have to devour one another to get ahead. Powerful, horrible, and all too true.
The only downside is how the characters all seem to default to white. The only girls whose physical appearances are described are pale and prone to blushing. It's a shame in a book which is otherwise so pro-woman and could easily have been remedied by describing characters with different skin colours.
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Rating: really liked it
Four somebody hold the door please, because I’m volunteer to get this bloody, scary, mind twisting and shouting, terrifying, not nail biter but whole arm biter, making you addict to the anxiety pills but you’re going to need to taste your boundaries stars!
THE INGREDIENTS TO CREATE THIS GRUESOME, SMART, WTH I’M READING, TAKE THIS AWAY, BUT ONCE YOU START YOU CANNOT DROP OUT BOOK:
Two cups of “ Handmaid’s Tale”
One table spoon of “Hunger Games”
Two pinches of “Beach” and “Annihilation”
And one cup of “ Lord of the flies”
INSTRUCTIONS FOR CREATING THIS HEART THROBBING BOOK
Mixed them with anger, frustration, witchy spells, pure magic, violence. And finally add some survival and combat skills, harshness, vulgarism, mercilessness and as soon as it gets cold, please serve it with feminism, equality, women friendship, liberation ( For the French version it will be served with fraternite, egalite, liberte)!
It can be better pair with thriller, apocalyptic , dark, violent, nightmarish book fans!
Don’t let pink cover fool you! If you expect a soft chic lit about women’s journey, please drop it before it gets glued to your hands! If you’re not ready for this book, as soon as you’re gonna want to finish it and you’re gonna start dreaming but I can assure you are not going to see a little girl in your dreams as like as our heroine did.
My minority report for the characters:
Tierney James: Mashup of Katniss Everdeen , German TV series Dark’s parallel universe Martha( the girl we saw at the last scene), Michonne from `”The Walking Dead”. Tough, survivor, problem solver, smart, pure feminist, idealist, skillful fighter.
Ryker: Avenger’s Clint Barton( Jeremy Renner’s archer character) meets Caprio’s Revenant character, Hugh Glass ( at least Ryker doesn’t raw liver) ! Protector, loyal, real good fighter, healer. He’s mysterious, wounded, man of his word but he’s also romantic guy who is ready to sacrifice himself for his love of his life, Tierney.
Michael: Noble, decent guy is about to start his prestigious job, reminds us of Mr. Darcy. Maybe it’s not fair to talk about him at the third place. Because we don’t much see him on the book ( we see him at the beginning and the ending but he makes life changing moves and changes Tierney’s life completely so I have to mention him.)
WRITING: Smart, fast paced, surprising, gripping.
CHARACTERS: All those girls could give you nightmares! They’re acting like incarnated Betty Davis and Joan Crawford ! They’re pure evil, batshit crazy, violent and ruthless! Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest could be considered as a Disney princess if I have to compare those girls with her!
ENDING: A good one, at least there is no total massacre or elimination. It was bloodless, bullet-less , wound-less ! Gives us hope and soothes our anxiety!
WHY I CUT THE ONE STAR: It was chaotic, fast pacing thriller but as soon as I reach at the middle of the book, romance parts didn’t suit so well but the horrifying and severe parts of the book !
And I’m so pissed off that one of the worst villanelles didn’t get what she deserved!
The love triangle was not necessary for me ! ( It doesn’t count as triangle because two men never meet or cross with each other) This book might have stayed as manifesto of women’s uprising to decide their own destinies!
But still it is a good try, well crafted, capturing story and I enjoyed it!
Special thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for sending me ARC COPY exchange of my honest review!
Rating: really liked it
Happy Pub Day!!!"I have to remind myself -the dresses, the red ribbons, the veils, the ceremonies- they're all just distractions to keep our minds off the real issue at hand. The grace year.
My chin begins to quiver when I think of the year ahead, the unknown, but I plaster on a vacant smile, as if I'm happy to play my part, so I might return and marry and breed and die. But not all of us will make it home...not in one piece."Hello, good evening, and let me introduce you to my favorite book of 2019,
The Grace Year. I know it sounds ridiculous to be picking a favorite book when half of the year hasn't even passed us by, but that's how sure I am that nothing else will even come close to measuring against what this book did to me-how it made me feel-and for how it will affect my thoughts and behavior long term. This book was horrifying and beautiful, weighty yet buoyant, and I will never be the same again after experiencing what was written in these pages. I finished the story last night, but I couldn't shake what I'd read, even in my dreaming state, and I don't think I'll be able to get a good night's sleep again until I work through this review, so here goes nothing.
"As the gate closes on the guards troubled faces, it's clear they truly believe we're loathsome creatures that need to be hidden away for safekeeping, for our own good, to exorcise the demons lurking inside of us, but even in this cursed place, anger, fear, and resentment boiling inside of me, I still don't feel magical. I still don't feel powerful. I feel forsaken."While the county that
The Grace Year takes place in is a dystopian type setting, it is certainly brought to life in a way that makes it feel real. If you've read the synopsis to this book, then you know the basic gist of the story, and the early readers stating that this has
The Handmaid's Tale meets
Lord of the Flies vibes are spot on. The entire story is written to the extreme, and yet every moment, down to the most minute detail, is an allegory for experiences that most (dare I say all?) females have encountered at some point and time by their sixteenth birthday.
The writing is atmospheric, breathtakingly beautiful, and evokes the most basic and raw emotion from the reader. Perhaps I had too many preconceived notions going in, but I was also surprised by quite a few of the little twists and turns that Liggett throws at us, and I utterly adore that she did not cut any corners or take any easy outs with this story. There are some really hard, horrifying, things that happen in this book, and even to the very last page, no one is guaranteed a happily ever after, and yet I've never felt more hopeful, secure, and proud to be a woman as I was when I turned the final page of
The Grace Year. I know I haven't given much in terms of plot detail, but I truly believe each and every reader should go into this one with an open mind, and open heart, and a need for compulsive page turning, because that's exactly what this book will provide.
I cannot recommend this story highly enough and there aren't enough stars on the entirety of Goodreads to express how emphatically I want you to add this book to your TBR. In some ways, I think females will appreciate this book the most, solely for the feminist thematic elements and encouragement, but I also believe that many men would enjoy and benefit from reading this book as well. Beyond the priceless message it provides,
The Grace Year is a highly entertaining read that I wish had been around when I was a teenager. The ending provides the type of female camaraderie that I wished for my predecessors, hope to see for myself and my generation, and feel arising in both of my daughters' generation. Well done, and I cannot wait for this story to be out in the world so that everyone else can read it and discuss.
"The things we do to girls. Whether we put them on pedestals only to tear them down, or use them for parts and holes, we're all complicit in this. But everything touches everything else and I have to believe that some good will come out of all this destruction. The men will never end the grace year. But maybe we can."*Uncorrected Bound Manuscript provided via the publisher.
Rating: really liked it
The Grace Year refused to dissipate and hung like a poisonous vapor long after I finished it, pervading every corner of my room like a simmering toxin. The feeling was a violent plunge encompassing revulsion and sorrow far beyond the personal: a sick, scorching nausea at humanity's violence against itself since the dawn of time. And though the ending was more hopeful than grim, I still feel my anger still brimming and unspent.
**
They call it the Grace Year, using so innocuous a word to obscure so hideous a truth. No one talks about what happens during the Grace Year: about the girls who return with blunt brutal looks, a residue of old violence about them, and the girls who don't return at all.
When Tierney turns sixteen, it is her turn to embark on the Grace Year. Banished to an isolated compound, she and the other Grace Year Girls have to live on the sharp edge of starvation, half-mad with their own circling, heartsick with the sameness of their days. But worse than that—even worse than the poachers prowling the edges of their prison, smelling their fear like sharks smell blood, ready to pounce and devour—is a darkness creeping evilly upon the girls’ senses. The fortunate ones don a veil, as red as the sins they’re supposed to expunge, symbolizing a promise for marriage once the Grace Year is over. The less fortunate ones have only a life of labor—or
worse—waiting for them. If indeed any of them had even a single day to look forward to.
Maybe the reason no one speaks of the grace year is because of us. How could the men live among us, lie with us, let us care for their children, knowing the horrors we inflict upon one another . . . alone . . . in the wilderness . . . in the dark?
This is the premise that dramatically sets the stage for
The Grace Year, and it’s the stuff of nightmares. The beginning of this novel held my eyes rooted to the page. I was entranced and horrified all at once.
The Grace Year, however, soon changes gear and, for a while, is primarily involved with the dislocation of Tierney’s life during the Grace Year—both physical and emotional. So submerged and embattled with fatigue and desperation and unable to shake off the sense of being watched, there rises a sensation that Tierney is slowly undoing herself, unwinding herself thread by thread. Her narrative voice becomes detached, sort of grayish and dullish and faraway-seeming. This is echoed multitudinously by the prose-rich passages of hallucinogenic accounts, and it makes for an uneasy read sometimes. While the writing fits the general aura, for a while every turn of the page felt—at least to me—like pressing forward through an endless briar patch. Fortunately, the author doesn't overextend herself awfully much, and tackling a few extra pages of such lavishly descriptive prose as filtered through Tierney’s evocative voice is a meager price to pay for a such a bold, affecting read.
There are plenty of enjoyable set pieces here. Misogyny is, of course, the narrative’s destructive force.
The Grace Year does a good job of emphasizing the brittleness of a male-dominated society that uses fear and ignorance to stiffen female individuality into silence. The novel also hauntingly underscores how corrosive it is to the soul to grow up as a young woman saddled with generations of toxic abusive patriarchal demons. Kim is so skilled an author and the case she makes is so dramatically compelling—and so horrifyingly substantiated—that the book never seems overbearingly didactic.
The author also makes no bones about the fact that the real monsters are not the women who are cruel to one another in order to fit into a male space, it’s the men who use women to their benefit, pitting them into competition, turning them against each other—with a bright, horrible relish—to fight for a token role. Internalized misogyny is an idea that runs deep in the veins of the novel and the author confronts it with brilliance and thoughtfulness.
“We hurt each other because it’s the only way we’re permitted to show our anger. When our choices are taken from us, the fire builds within. Sometimes I feel like we might burn down the world to cindery bits, with our love, our rage, and everything in between.”
If I had to point out a few other quibbles, it would be that the emerging love story is not only handled unevenly overall in the book but I’m not sure it’s altogether convincing (or necessary). In fact, it winds up being more window dressing than anything else, and the novel could have done without. The unwieldy list of characters also doesn’t meld well with the frenetic style, as there is not really enough time to spend with each of them and their characterization is flimsy enough to disappear them into the cracks of the story.
That said,
The Grace Year is a pretty solid read—so terrifyingly specific, and yet so hauntingly universal.
Rating: really liked it
This had a lot going for it, but the pace threw me off and it had one of my most hated tropes..so a middle of the road 3 star is where we land. It's smart; conventional enough of a plot that it's easy to sink right into the story, but unique enough that it didn't feel like another paint-by-number "dystopian". I might have quite enjoyed this as a teen.
Rating: really liked it
The Grace Year opens like a mix of
The Hunger Games and
The Handmaid's Tale, then shifts to a retelling of
Lord of the Flies. It's poised to be a feminist tale of sisterhood and equality, but the protagonist - who's a complete
bonehead - starts her journey with only male friendship and later isolates herself with another male companion. The way she professes her love to him is by willingly sacrificing her dream of freedom and sleeping with him.
Not only is this a book whose themes miss the mark, there are so many technical issues with the writing that it's impossible to enjoy.For a feminist retelling of
Lord of the Flies that proves to be everything this book could have been, check out Wilder Girls by Rory Power.
Rating: really liked it
How do you review a book that you enjoyed reading immensely yet it has glaringly poor execution?
The plot is sooo good.
Welcome to a world where girls are banished to an isolated camp for their sixteenth year of life (The Grace Year) to vanquish the "magic", or power, they hold over men, only to be married off or assigned duties as an indentured worker upon their return.
"White ribbons for the young girls, red for the grace year girls, and black for the wives. Innocence. Blood. Death."
This camp sounds like a great setup for some serious nightmarish drama, huh?
Well, we'll never know because very little of the storyline revolves around the day to day inner workings of the camp.
I found it difficult to get on board from the beginning because there is no background, no history to tell the reader how we got to this point in time. Little to no character development.
The pacing is so off. Months pass by with the turn of a page. Months that I wanted to hear about.
The MC had so much potential. She is painted to be a strongwillled forward thinking girl in a backwards world. Yet at the camp she allows herself to be mercilessly bullied to the point of near death with no attempts at defending herself. In the end she does little to advance the plight of the women.
I don't think I'm giving anything away here when I ask why does EVERY YA book feature a romance? There's no room for it in this storyline. It's another eye rolling insta-love that does not fit the girl power theme.
This book has been compared to a marrying of Lord of the Flies and The Handmaid's Tale and I think that's a fair assessment in as far as the plot goes. However, The Grace Year doesn't quite reach the level of tension and abject horror found in those stories.
This book lands flatly in the YA genre and teen girls are going to eat it up, thus I suspect it will be an instant bestseller upon release.
5 Stars for entertainment
3 Stars for execution
You do the math.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating: really liked it
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This book is one of my biggest disappointments in years. Everyone was talking about how great this was-- it's the YA Hype Train™ in action, yet again, and once more, I'm left behind in the dust to wonder, "Did I read a different book than everyone else?" It's not that I don't trust your judgement, exactly, it's just that-- okay, yeah, I don't trust your judgement. What the fuck was this?
THE GRACE YEAR is a book that borrows ideas and concepts from several notable works of speculative dystopic-themed fiction, including (obviously)
The Handmaid's Tale, but also
The Crucible,
The Hunger Games,
Lord of the Flies, and
The Purge. It's set in a society with institutional and social misogyny built inherently into its system where women are sorted by caste based on their marital status and believed to be full of magic that is both a danger and an aphrodisiac. At age sixteen, they're released into the woods beyond to sow their proverbial wild oats, and release their magic, despite the many dangers of the woods and the poachers who collect and sell their bodies to be used in potions.
Tierney, the main character, is one of these girls. Before their release, they are "claimed" by the men who want them, and Tierney is as surprised as anyone when she's promised to a boy before she leaves. Once out in the wilds, it takes a decidedly
Lord of the Flies note where the girls go a little crazy at the behest of their sociopathic and Resident Mean Girl Ringleader™ who seems to hate women just as much, if not more so, as the men in this book, so what's a little girl on girl hate?
People were lauding this book for its feminist themes. I don't really see that. Men play such a focal point in this story and end up being Tierney's saving grace. The girls and women all hate each other, and it doesn't really bring any new criticisms to the table that stories like
Handmaid haven't already done. There's also the usual YA love triangle in this book, which in my opinion makes it even less of a feminist work, particularly since it feels so unnecessary and is done so passionlessly. All of the twists feel like cop-outs and lack finesse. I thought the big secret was totally lame-- and, even worse, I completely predicted it. From the beginning. But I've read all the books that this author probably drew inspiration from, which is the problem with being well-read. Nothing surprises you anymore.*
*Yes, I realize that sounds snobby. But all my haters accuse me of that anyway, so I may as well revel in my literary snobbery. I'm not ashamed: I am one smart bitch, and I fucking know it.
*tips fedora*
Maybe if this book hadn't been sold to me as The Next Big Thing with people hyping it up left and right, I probably would have liked it more. But I'm honestly shocked everyone is kicking up such a big fuss about it. I thought it was unimaginative and lacked the world and character development it so desperately needed to make it great. The beginning had so much promise and then it jumped the shark and the story went to shit. Curse you, YA Hype Train™, for setting me up to be the bad guy yet again.
1.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
Intelligent, haunting & mesmerizing emotional thriller!
I loved this book so much. I wanted to stop at a few points and discuss with someone but I didn’t have anyone reading it with me or a book club to discuss it with. There is just so much worth talking about. I am feeling so much and out this book right now. I just saw that it is being made into a movie and I already can’t wait. I was totally engrossed throughout the entire book and it surprised me more often than not. Almost every time I thought something was going to happen, I got hit with something completely unexpected instead.
It starts out with the main character Tierney who is about to enter her Grace Year. The county is set up with extremely misogynistic laws. They say that girls have magic in their sixteenth year and that they are dangerous so they send all the girls away to a separate colony in the woods for a year, and the girls from the previous year return on the same day as the new girls leave.
Before leaving they have a ceremony where the eligible men and 16 year old boys choose from the girls who they want to marry and they give veils to the fathers of their choice, each father brings the veil home to his daughter. At the ceremony the boy lifts the veil and the girl sees the boy whom she will marry. The girls not chosen will either be sent to the fields or put to service for the remainder of their lives. Tierney isn’t like other girls, she doesn’t long to get a vail and get married, she actually wants to work in the fields. She feels being married is tantamount to being owned.
One strange part of the story is the girls that go away, they are at a colony-like place surrounded by walls and woods and there are poachers outside the walls. So if any of the girls stray from the path on the way there, try to escape while they are there or get banished by the rest of the girls for some reason, are almost immediately caught by the poachers. They skin the girls alive and put all of their organs and parts into jars to be sold on the black market. The poachers won’t come into the colony for fear of being cursed by the magic.
The poachers are men from the outskirts of the county. They are generally the sons of prostitutes. People (women or girls) from the county can get banned to the outskirts as punishment. Young girls are punished if their sisters go missing during their Grace year and their bodies are not accounted for by the poachers. Punishments are harsh, obviously and doled out by the council.
In fact, the only time magic comes up is when it’s convenient for them. Like when Mrs. Pinter’s husband died, Mr. Coffey suddenly accused his wife of twenty-five years of secretly harboring her magic and levitating in her sleep. Mrs. Coffey was as meek and mild as they come—hardly the levitating sort—but she was cast out. No questions asked. And surprise, surprise, Mr. Coffey married Mrs. Pinter the following day.
But if I ever made such an accusation, or if I came back from my grace year unbroken, I would be sent to the outskirts to live among the prostitutes.
What happens during Tierney’s Grace Year is quite a revelation. I couldn’t figure out for the longest time if the magic was real or not. Also we know that in certain ways Tierney was more prepared for the year than many of her female counterparts, because she was a tomboy and worked with her father as well as spent a lot of time in the woods with Michael, but she had so much going against her. Kiersten was the leader of the girls and she makes an awesome villain. She was evil from the beginning when she teased Tierney saying she would “pray for her to get a vail”.
During the this time, I think I felt everything Tierney was feeling. The book was so well written. The characters all came alive, I could see the camp, the well, the cots, the tree it was all so vivid. I really can’t wait for it to be brought to life in movie form. I don’t like to give away any spoilers past the beginning 10-20% of the book, so I won’t go into more, but to say that Tierney finds a lot of truth about herself, her family, and her society as she is out there. It is a true physical and emotional journey and it’s awesome!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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Rating: really liked it
another feminist dystopia, another underwhelmed jessica. seems pretty on brand for me at the moment, unfortunately.
this review is probably going to be all over the place because i cant really articulate why this didnt quite work for me. it wasnt a horrible reading experience - in fact, the story is so fast paced that it makes for a quick read. maybe i just wasnt in the right mood for this? because all i could keep thinking whilst reading is
'why? what is the purpose of this?'and what it keeps coming back to is the world building. there just isnt enough of it to sustain my interest in the dystopian aspect of the story. i have soooo many questions and im not sure if everything is kept vague because the aim of the story is to be mysterious, or the world building is just seriously lacking and underdeveloped. im leaning more towards the latter at this point.
and maybe this was a
‘wrong book at the wrong time’ kind of situation for me. i need to learn, that when this happens, to set the book aside and come back to it, rather than push though and give it a mediocre rating/review. not really fair.
regardless, im happy to see that this is getting so much hype and praise from others!
↠ 2.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
In the County, girls are banished from the community during their 16th-year. It is believed that this is the age at which a girl's true magic will be revealed.
Apparently, these young ladies are so tantalizing, they threaten to steal husbands from wives, driving the wives crazy with jealousy in the process.
The girls are sent to live together in a fenced-in compound deep in the woods. Once there, the girls must survive completely on their own, without any supervision, for a full year.
This time in their lives is known as the
Grace Year.
When the year has passed, the survivors return to the community, get married, have babies, take care of their husbands and
slowly watch their souls be crushed live happily ever after.
Tierney James has always dreamed of more; a better life. When her Grace Year arrives, however, she knows she is powerless to stop it.
Shipped off with the rest of the girls, she decides to try her best to motivate them all to work together in order to survive. It doesn't have to be that bad, does it?
Unfortunately, not all of the girls are there to play nice. A true
Lord of the Flies situation unfolds. This is their first time on their own, without any adults, and it shows.
These girls get
real brutal, real quick!
Before she knows it, Tierney is literally on the brink of death, with seemingly no allies.
How will she ever make it through her Grace Year alive?
This was definitely an interesting examination of women's rights, relationships and roles within society. The Dystopian world, both inside and outside of the County, was harsh and unforgiving.
There was a lot of drama amongst the girls and definitely some surprisingly savage moments.
Unfortunately, my mind kept wandering.
I never became fully engrossed within the story. Some of it felt very surface level and I ended up feeling fairly blasé about the whole thing.
Absolutely if you are interested in a YA-version of
The Handmaid's Tale meets
Lord of the Flies, you should pick this up.
That's pretty much a perfect description of this story. Although I wasn't crazy about the romantic elements, I think overall it is a good story.
Thank you so much to the publisher, Wednesday Books, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review.
As always, I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to seeing more from Kim Liggett in the future.
Rating: really liked it
This book seems to be written with the idea that getting teenage girls to think about feminism is like getting a dog to swallow a pill by hiding it in a piece of cheese, where the cheese in this case is every harmful and regressive trope in YA literature. (With no attempt to parody or subvert them or anything like that.)
It does finally come together and have a satisfying ending, but it takes so long and is such a slog to get there because I did not connect with the main character at all.
If there’s one thing Tierney wants you to know about her, it’s that she’s not like other girls. For fucks sake. Yes, this kind of internalized misogyny makes sense in the deeply misogynistic society she lives in, but her belief that other girls are stupid sheep is fully supported by the text right up until the very end, when she suddenly changes her mind, not because of what she’s seen, but despite it. I kept waiting for the author to do something clever and subvert the expectations she’d set up because, again, so many gushy blurbs, but that just kept not happening.
If there’s a second thing Tierney wants you to know about her, it’s that she’s smart. (Though technically, this is part of the whole not like other girls thing.) In fact, she is not particularly bright; the first act of the story, where we should be getting to know and sympathize with her, has so many scenes where she’s completely blindsided by a “twist” that the reader sees coming a mile away. This is partially a case of first person POV backfiring; it would be a lot easier to understand Tierney being caught off guard if every scrap of info we used to predict what was going to happen had not just been explained to us by Tierney herself.
There is this super eerie mystery to look forward to though; what happens during the grace year? All 16 year old girls are sent off to a walled off encampment in the woods for a year, so that they can purge themselves of their evil feminine magic. No one is allowed to speak of what happens during their grace year, but women come back without fingers or ears…many don’t come back at all! OK, creepy! But then they finally get there (after almost 100 pages) and it’s like “Oh…that’s it? Yeah…that’s what I was kind of worried it was going to be…hoping for more than that though.” (view spoiler)
[Yeah, I get it, it’s Lord of the Flies except with girls, except they have just enough supplies to last a year with the full expectation that they’ll be taken home after a year if they just sit around and don’t murder each other, but also the well water is full of drugs .... and apparently no female before Tierney, in the entire history of this place, ever thought of collecting rain water or scouting around and seeing if there’s a spring within walking distance (there is), even though we are told the water looks and tastes gross... because all girls are useless prissy princess but also are cool with drinking swamp water? (hide spoiler)]And then it’s just pointless violence for another 200 pages. And I get the point the author is making (view spoiler)
[misogynistic societies turn women against each other so they don't band together. (hide spoiler)] But the execution suuuuccckkkked. Because, if you don’t care about Tierney by this point then guess what, there aren’t any other characters for you to root for. Oh yeah, she’s locked in there with a large group of other girls her own age…but all girls except for Tierney are just mindless sheep, remember? The only other character, if we are being very generous, is Kiersten , though she is just the flat, purely evil, slutty, mean girl antagonist obsessed with persecuting Tierney because she’s jealous of how cool Tierney is. The other girls are nothing but a list of names. One girl gets a little screen time because she used to be friends with Kiersten but then they had a falling out and there’s a little mystery about what happened… and then another girl adopts a pet bird…and that’s it. That is literally all that distinguishes this long list of girls names from one another. Often a name is introduced for the first time just sentences before she dies and we know nothing about her.
Even her four sisters back home, who we are told are the emotional leverage keeping Tierney in line, are barely more than blank facades; there's an older sister who is nice to her, an older sister who is not, and two younger sisters who are interchangeable small girls.
And then, just when you’re thinking, well, at least there’s no horrifyingly disturbing romance (view spoiler)
[Tierney falls for one of the poachers. The poachers are a group of guys who are outcasts from the larger society who make their living by hunting the grace year girls. When they catch one, they skin them alive, trying to make it take as long as possible, and sell their body parts back to the townspeople, who believe the stuff has magical properties but, more importantly, want the herd of excess females thinned out.
Tierney and her beaux talk about this and he, despite falling for and spending a lot of time with Tierney, is totally unrepentant. There's no "I was conditioned to think of the grace year girls as monsters but now that I've met one of you, I see that you are really just normal people and I can no longer do this". No, he sees nothing wrong with preying on the other girls after meeting Tierney because she's not like them, remember? He remains convinced the other girls have evil magic and you know what? She's also fine with that. He can torture other girls to death and sell their skin as long as he recognizes that she is too special for that.
At one point, very late in the game, the other girls manage to pull inside and kill another poacher, who, remember, has been waiting just outside the encampment to catch anyone who sets foot outside and torture them to death. And Tierney’s reaction is “How horrible; he was only doing his job. He had a family. ): And he was on his side of the fence at the time…” Yeah guys, you didn’t need to freak out on some poor guy who was just trying to kill you. I can’t believe you’d put his family through that. Technically, he wasn’t even a direct threat to you at that exact second.
Tierney tries to run off and make a new life with her hunky serial killer but he is killed by the other poachers for violating the bro code. Only then does Tierney realize that sexism is bad. She goes back to the other girls and uses all her cunning to trick them into drinking some water that doesn’t taste bad. They go home and Tierney suddenly discovers that other girls have been cool the entire time. It is kind of like when the Wizard of Oz goes from black and white to technicolor, if that didn’t happen until the last five or ten minutes of the movie and the film up to that point had been about Dorothy watching Toto get put down and then having to get up the next day to help Aunty Em put up rhubarb preserves and also everyone is super racist the entire time. (hide spoiler)]
Rating: really liked it
I do not even have words. I loved and hated it. The end.
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
Happy Sweet Sixteen!Occasionally I like to really switch things up from my thrillers and read a frightening dystopian novel. Though it’s extremely rare (if ever) that I read something labeled YA. But I was greatly rewarded for stepping outside my little comfort zone! And bluntly put…
I WAS BLOWN AWAY!! I was locked in and spellbound from the opening page!
I read this one while on vacation....and all I wanted to do was get back to the room and keep reading! (It was just that good!)
Tierney is entering her 16th year, a year known as
The Grace Year. A time when all young women are sent away to an encampment where they go to release their
magic. After which, they return home to take their rightful place as wives or possibly face a bleak, uncertain future. That’s assuming they even come back at all...
The looming question? Is your worst fate lurking inside the gates or out? Who can you trust? Not your friends, not the guards, or the poachers. To quote an old warning,
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” At this point, and most disturbing, can you really even trust yourself?
If you enjoy dystopian novels don’t skip on this read! Weeks later...still can’t stop reflecting on this book! Definitely one of my favorite books for 2019.
A buddy read with Susanne!
Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martins Press and Kim Liggett for an ARC to read and review
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for BEST YOUNG ADULT FICTION 2019! what will happen?this book loves me
but i only consider it a really good friend.
i had been looking forward to reading this like crazy, but i didn't love it as much as everybuddy else, and that makes my readerheart sad.
the premise sounded outstanding: speculative feminist fiction featuring a hyper-patriarchal community in which the fear of female sexuality is so profound that sixteen-year-old girls are rounded up and exiled for a year in an outlying compound; isolated from good decent folk while the potency of their sexual awakening is released harmlessly into the wilderness so they can then return purified, ready for the duties of marriage IF they have been chosen by an unmarried man, or for the working world if they have not. no one who has not gone through the ordeal themselves knows what *actually* transpires during the grace year—speaking of it is forbidden, but many girls die or do not return, giving even more strength to the belief in the seeeeecret magical power of sexy teengirls.
through the eyes of reluctant and rebellious tierney james, we will learn all about what goes on behind those closed gates, when girls who have never been allowed freedom, agency, or any control over their lives whatsoever are thrown together and forced to survive a whole year without supervision or intervention, with uncivilized ‘poachers’ ready to kill them if they stray into the woods, all while they are—let us not forget—being relentlessly purged of their sexual toxins; exposed to the highly-concentrated outpourings of so much dangerous female magic.
spoiler alert: contrary to what we all know about what happens when teengirls are left to their own devices, there are zero sexxy pillow fights.
i loved about 3/4 of this book. it started out with great promise, intensifying suspense, mysterious details—building the world of this sexually repressed, misogynistic community where troublesome wives can be gotten rid of—in that old public execution-y way—for dubious reasons, all on a man’s say-so, thus freeing up his bed for some sweet tender teenbride, where marriage is the only salvation or protection for women (unless—of course—you become troublesome), where women can be banished for minor infractions, or for the infractions of their sisters, fostering a climate of fear and competitive viciousness as social survival mechanism, pitting women against each other, and now let's toss a couple dozen adolescent girls who have been told they have magical powers into close, unmonitored, quarters and see what happens!
bring on survival of the cruelest.
all of this was great—the character dynamics were as fierce as i’d expected, the spectrum of emerging personality traits allowed to develop in this self-governed community felt authentic, the psychological stress and escalating tension was well-handled and that reveal was top-notch. it reminded me of two other books that would spoil this book if i named them here and would spoil THOSE books if i put them in spoiler tags, so i’ll just appreciate it on my own. but if you want some name-droppy readalikes, this is definitely Lord of the Flies meets The Handmaid's Tale meets The Crucible.
around the 3/4 mark, however, it lost me a bit. there was a big chunk of story that revisited already-covered ground without contributing anything new, there was a completely perfunctory love story; one with necessary dramatic payoff, sure, but its development was bland, and the story seemed to lose its way. i thought the ending was strong, if a little on-the-nose, and my overall post-read impression is favorable, but that big disappointing chunk lost momentum for me, and it was hard to recover.
also, speaking as someone who has never referred to a map in a book that included them, for the first time ever i really could have used one. it was hard for me to picture this location, to understand where the safe places were w/r/t the compound, and how locations were...arranged. i read this as an arc, and it’s possible the finished book will provide one for visualizationally-challenged folks like me, but i struggled a little.
i liked it more than i didn’t, but some of it falls apart under scrutiny. so, do not scrutinize! take it as allegory, as symbolism, read chelsea and tatiana’s excellent reviews, and i will round up my 3 1/2 stars because i did like so much of it.
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