Utterly gripping and suspenseful. I was shocked by how quickly this book pulled me in. From the hauntingly beautiful cover, to the final page. It me laugh and cry....happy and mad. SO sad and mad, a few times!

Romance doesn’t appeal to me, so I usually steer clear of YA books and their youthful drama. But I enjoyed watching the “Handmaid’s Tale”, so I snatched this one up when NG offered it as a “Read Now”. I was pleasantly surprised! Yes, there was romance and adolescent drama, but not the type that put me off or made me roll my eyes.

I instantly fell in love with Tierney and her head-strong nature. She rejects the traditional role of wife and mother. Working in the fields, to hang on to her freedom and individuality, sounds far more appealing to her.

At the age of sixteen, girls are exiled to an encampment far away from their families. This is their “grace year”. The year they “come into their magic”. Become dangerous and irresistible to men. Able to lure them from their wives and families. Elements of magic and fantasy are instant repellent for me, but in this story they were magically (pun intended) mesmerizing.

The young women spend their banished year ridding themselves of their “magic”, so they can return completely cleansed. Imagine a large group of jealous, backstabbing teenagers spending a year together, with no supervision. A recipe for disaster, before you consider the obstacles they’ll face. The story definitely had a “Mean Girls” component. And Kiersten plays the role of catty ringleader excellently. She keeps the girls pitted against one another, while constantly stirring the pot.

Several of the twists were completely unexpected, which I loved. For me, the only downside of the book was the ending. Not clear cut. I’m not sure if it’s left open for a sequel...or if the author thinks we’re smart enough to understand her intent. I’m not that smart! I keep thinking of different ways to interpret it and it’s driving me crazy. But the read was worth a little madness!

<b>My Rating:</b> 4.5 ⭐️’s (rounding up)
<b>Published:</b> October 8th 2019 by Wednesday Books
<b>Pages:</b> 416

<b>Recommend:</b> Yes!

#TheGraceYear #NetGalley #YAThriller
@Kim_Liggett

The Grace Year, the year 16 year old girls come into their "magic" and are banished to the outskirts of town to free themselves of their power to seduce men. This was a wild YA dystopian ride that had me flying through the pages to see if Tierney will break Garner County's ideals or if she will be wore down by the year of survival and cruelty and learn to bend to the will of men. I found the ending to be extremely satisfying and possibly open to a sequel hint hint.

Highly recommend for fans of Hunger Games (although this is definitely grittier) and dystopian novels.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martins Press and Kim Liggett for an ARC to read and review in exchange for an honest review.

This book instantly skyrocketed to one of my favorites of 2019. It's like "The Handmaid's Tale" and "The Hunger Games" had a creepy, dystopian baby, with a little "Lord of the Flies" mixed in, and I was hooked from the very beginning. I've barely stopped thinking about it since I finished it last week! A must-read.

The Grace Year is a story of women coming together, sort of, but not really. It's a quick read that will end up making you pissed.

There will probably be accidental spoilers in here, so proceed with caution.

In this village the men are in control and the women are subservient to them. The women are not allowed to even gather in a group, for fear that "their magic" will bring harm to the men. You know, because the women cause the men to have lustful urges, and cause the men to stray from their very devoted wives, and it's all the women's fault because they have "magic." Basically, every excuse you've heard from rape apologists, is listed in this book. The men come up with whatever reason they can think of in order to get rid of their wives when they get sick of them and that way they can marry one of the fresh 16 year olds that survives the Grace Year. One of the men claims that his wife was levitating and speaking in tongues the day before these girls go off to get rid of their magic so that he can have a new wife, which will now be his fourth.

The girls go off, with a small sack of provisions, and are supposed to survive in the woods for a year. This year Tierney (which I kept pronouncing as tyranny in my head, though I doubt that's what the author hoped for.) has to go, she isn't expecting to be picked as a wife, and hopes to work in the fields as a laborer when she returns. Tierney isn't like other girls, her father taught her a lot of things that a boy is normally taught, and she spent most of her life in the woods running with the council leader's son, Michael. This has made the village hate her, and all the girls that she's to go with hate her a lot. It gets worse when Michael picks her to be his wife, because he didn't want her to be sent to the fields to work and be raped by the men. OH, also, should the girls not survive their Grace Year, their younger sister is sent to the outskirts of the county in order to a prostitute and as a punishment for the family. I really don't understand why this is a thing. I really didn't get it, I guess it's supposed to prevent the girls from killing themselves in way that would prevent their bodies from being brought back? Or staying in the woods forever? Again, that didn't make sense to me, other then the dirty men wanting to rape children because as soon as a girl starts menstruating in the outskirts, she's free to be raped, oh, excuse me, "visited by the men."

Really this book made me angry.

I get what the author was trying to do, I do, but I really didn't like it. Maybe because I'm sick of having the conversation about men trying to control women's bodies in the real world that I didn't want to read a story about it. I mean this is perfect timing for the book to come out with the popularity of "The Handmaid's Tale" and the abortion issues of the southern states, this might get young girls/women talking about the issues instead of worrying what the men will say.

The ending also made me so angry. All of that, all of what occurred during the book, to have it come back with that /surprise twist/ and then to have her "go back to normal." Sure there's hope, but I don't want hope in a book like this, I want action and resolution.

I'm sure this will appeal to a lot of angry women that are sick of having to bite their tongue, but this wasn't for me. It was well written, it was engaging, it had a message that through all the context is important, but the way the book went about it made me dislike it.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I really enjoyed a great many things about this book. Characters were fleshed out and the plot was well spaced. Some of the secondary storylines could've used a bit more page space but all in all an enjoyable read!

I requested this book because there was so much successful publicity and y’all about this one.

The story focuses on the grace year, one year in which all of the women of age are sent into the woods to get rid of their magic. Some won’t make it out. Those who do return, either to be married and have their own children, or to be assigned jobs. But something strange always happens during the grace year - the girls start losing their minds. What is really happening? Is the magic real? Are the grace year girl ghosts real?

For me, this book was slow to start and then took off at a heart pounding pulse. Getting the girls out to the cabin seemed to take a long time, and that part of the book felt like I had to work through it.

Once they were there, however, I couldn’t stop turning pages. I was intrigued by their relationships with each other, the guards who keep the girls in the compound they’re supposed to be in, and the poachers who wait for them to step out of line.

There’s a bit of The Handmaid’s Tale feel to it, in that there’s a secret society of women who are slowly working toward change, and the time period feels ambiguous. But Liggett took those similar feminist themes and ran with them in hew own way.

This book is shocking, brutal, and leaves the reader with hope for a better future for the girls. I definitely recommend!

Girls are banished from their families for their sixteenth year to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. Not all of them make it back alive. A dystopian mix of Hunger Games, Handmades Tale and Lord of the Flies. The things we do to girls . . .

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. all thoughts and feelings are my own.

Five stars for one of my top 5 books of 2019!!

This was a beautiful, tragic, desperate tale of female empowerment and fighting back when you know the way of life is wrong.

Each year, when girls turn 16, they are sent into the wilderness for their Grace Year. This is the year they become women and let out their magic. Their magic makes men do terrible things, or so they say. Not all make it out alive. For those that do, they are forever changed.

The characters were amazing. You knew and understood their feelings and actions. It all seemed genuine to the story.

There were twists throughout that I was expecting. The ending had twist after twist that just wrapped the story up in a beautifully tragic way. There’s no happy ever after here, but there is hope one day there will be.

Oh my goodness. I was not prepared for this book. It sucked me in from the first page and I didn’t want to stop reading.

It's interesting to specifically market a novel as "feminist", because it then has a higher standard to "prove". It's not enough for a girl to live in an overtly patriarchal society and recognise that it's tripe - she must OVERTHROW the powerful.

In Tierney James's community, females outnumber males yet it's still obviously misogynistic. Very cis and hetero, too, with no mention of trans/enby people. (And a suspected same-gender-attracted girl is an outcast, so don't count on "positive" LGBTIAQ representation.) Tierney recognises that the females should band together to change society, but the "bootlickers of the patriarchy" (thanks to Mona Eltahawy for that term) don't seem interested.

It takes long enough that you wonder when subversions will come. Until then, we wait as it's made clear that Tierney is "not like other girls". She doesn't want to be veiled. She has skills that the other girls don't.

It doesn't take much for the female antagonist to go from manipulative to homicidal. The story acknowledges the negative stereotype: if a bunch of women have to live together, they'll end up killing each other. And it PERPETUATES that. Tierney's so much "not like other girls" that she's cast out of the commune.

Tierney is alone for a while, using her survival skills. But then comes the pivotal event.

This section of THE GRACE YEAR is the weakest, as we wait for the inevitable return to the camp. When it happens, Tierney has even more information and skills to deal with the other girls and their return to the community.

By novel's end, the women mostly keep their feminism secret, though inroads have been made towards real change.

The story could've been stronger, pushed Tierney to extremes. Though she's obviously tested, the author also goes easy on her.

Though I'm complaining here, THE GRACE YEAR is actually quite compelling. It made me FEEL a lot, even if a lot of frustration and anger.

Overall, this is the kind of story to make readers question what makes a book feminist. Were the sexist tropes all subverted? Did some things seem "convenient"? Did you feel hope at the end, or pessimistic because only the "special" girls have hope - not all?

My inbox awaits your opinions.

The story was well set-up. I liked the main character but felt that she was too prone to put herself at the mercy of people who were clearly dangerous. I thought it was interesting how cruelty from one group of people can lead to cruelty from another, sometimes. It was pretty clear how things were going to go once the girls set off, and it might have felt as though it took a while for things to develop. I don't come across many books these days that deal with the language of flowers, that was interesting.

I loved the ending, right up until I hated it. The ending starting me wondering if this is the beginning of a sequel. Despite how I felt about the ending, the book was interesting enough that I'd probably read a sequel.

This is very much not the type of book I gravitate towards, but I really enjoyed it. It was such an original story with a great cast of characters. Some you are sympathetic too and others you despise. My only complaint is that it read too much like a YA book. With the numerous adult themes, I was expecting it to read a little differently.

I felt like i was reading a mix of the hunger games and the handmaids tale. This book felt like it was all over the place, it was a excellent read, it had a great plot and story to it. I just couldn't get past the feeling of how mixed it felt with other books.
Thank you for a review copy of this book, for my honest review.

GoodReads:

Review I was extremely motivated to finish this book - it kept me up at night wanting to know what happened. I found the world engaging and interesting, and I loved the metaphors for the patriarchy and how it gets women to tear each other apart. I liked that there was room for the main character to grow and change and have that be ok. In spite of the oppression, there is LGBTQ+ representation, which was nice.

I was not a fan of the ending - it's an ambiguous one, so if you are a person who needs/wants closure, be aware. Also as other reviewers have pointed out, I found the lack of diversity in race disappointing, especially given that the county was supposed to originally have been many people with different languages coming together and communicating with flowers. But they're all pale skinned with straight hair? Really?

If you're looking for a female-centered dystopia, you'll most likely enjoy this book.

*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*

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Happy Halloween! Yes, these are real gravestones. They’re found in one of the historic burial grounds in Boston.
The Grace Year is best described as a dystopian thriller. In a cruel religion based patriarchy all girls are sent away for their 16th year to “burn off their magic.” No one speaks about where they go but everyone knows each year many don’t come back and many come back maimed. A nice commentary on how patriarchal structures can hurt everyone and also can cause women to lash out at each other. I struggled to put it down; I had to find out what happened! I will caution that the ending is ambiguous - some people don’t like that. And while there was diversity in sexuality racial diversity was sorely lacking with all descriptions of the girls being forms of pale and straight hair.
Thank you to the publisher for the free copy via Netgalley!
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This book is a mashup of The Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies and I absolutely loved reading it.

The worldbuilding was done in a subtle way, no info-dump. I liked how the author found a way to show the details of the world through the main character's everyday life, I enjoyed the incorporation of the old flower language, I think this addition was really creative as it was something I have not seen before. However I wish the author had explained or at least hinted at the history of this society because in the book it is never revealed how it came to be that this kind of structure and a set of rules were created.

Something that I believe was not necessary to the story was the romance. I did not see a point of it in a book with a message such as this one. Also as the book was quite short there was not enough time and space to develop the romance so it looked like insta-love and while it was cute at times, I did not really care for it.

Other than these couple points, I really enjoyed my reading experience, I thought the topics used in the book were handled well, the message relevant and clear while not being preachy, the ending realistic. I can definitely see this book becoming very popular between readers once it comes out and I would recommend it to everyone who find the premise interesting.

For fans of the Handmaids Tale, this dystopian thriller, tells the story of the women and girls of Grace County. A small community which seems to be populated by mostly women. While it is never expressly stated, it appears that male children are rare. And each girl, during their 16th year is sent out to a remote camp,for one year. A time in which they are supposed to rid themselves of their “magic”. “Magic” in this case is a mystical quality that women use to seduce and corrupt the men of the community. Each year the sixteen year olds are sent out to live their grace year alone, fending for themselves. The results are always the same, the casualties are always steep. Each returning grace year girl is expected to step into the role that has been chosen for her. The ones who don’t return or who remain unaccounted for, their family members bear their shame, and younger sisters are banished to the outskirts.
Told from the point of view of Tireney, a willful sixteen year old who has already committed herself to the realities of a life full of manual labor. All her plans are thrown into the wind when she finds herself the recipient of a veil. Chosen as a bride my her childhood best friend, Michael. Of course, any plans Tierney may have depend on her surviving her own grace year. The path is fraught with poachers, fellow grace year girls who turn on you, and the elements, survival is truly for the fittest. A disturbing tale, with a few surprises along the way, this is an engrossing story. I’m hearing this may be adapted to film, and I am interested in seeing what they do with it. Definitely a worthwhile read. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced copy.

This book is such a timely read with women's rights and the current political state in the USA. This is a great read for anyone who loves The Handmaid's Tale and dystopian novels. The plot twists and sense of foreboding kept me reading until the end.

I heard so many great things about this novel but it didn’t live up to the hype. I enjoyed the female empowerment but It felt forced to me. Unfortunately this one just wasn’t for me.

I absolutely adored this book. The sheer strength that the main character had was amazing. This was reminiscent of Atwood's tale of female strength and community. I purchased five copies (one for my own shelf) and four others to share with friends.

Tierney the terrible, her nick name from younger years, is approaching her Grace Year in Garner County. Girls in their 16th year are sent out to live a year-long sequestered life with the other girls their age, to get rid of their magic and return as women. Not all of the girls return after the year, with horrible rumors surrounding what happens during the Grace Year, but no one knows the truth unless you've been and returned alive. The enemies are the living conditions, the poaches outside the boundaries and even the girls themselves. Tierney is determined to survive and make it better for future girls.

I didn't expect this book to drag me in and capture my attention the way it did, because I'm not usually a fan of this genre. I loved that it made me think and I could relate the issues involved to current life problems. It was suspenseful, shocking, and unusual. I highly enjoyed this novel. Fans of the Hunger Game series will love Tierney James and The Grace Year.