The Grace Year has been described as The Hunger Games meets with The Handmaid’s Tale, and I gotta say, that’s a pretty perfect description, perhaps with a little Lord of the Flies tossed in for good measure. The writing will leave you emotionally raw, deeply disturbed, and craving more in all the best ways.⁣
⁣
Do yourself a favor, and get your hands on this book ASAP. 5🌟⁣

I had very high hopes for this book once reading the description and it did not disappoint. This was such a well written story. I’m was horrifying and beautiful all at once. Highly recommend!

“Kneeling in the dirt, barefoot, eyes to God, bathed in golden light, they look like something not of this earth.”

* * * *
4 / 5

A classic tale of womanhood, first love, fighting oppression, and becoming your basest self. The Grace Year hung in my thoughts for days after reading it, clouding my mind with the violence and savagery of it, the subtle horror and the sheer weirdness of the tale of it weaves.

"To be at odds with your nature, what everyone expects from you, is a life of constant struggle”

Tierney James’s grace year is approaching. Year after year she has watched the older girls leave, fresh-faced and the chosen few veiled, selected for marriage by the eligible men. She has watched them return, their eyes vacant and mere shadows of their former selves. Words and tales linger in the streets, stories of the girls burning out their magic out there in the wilds, returning safe and biddable and broken.

The world Liggett depicts made my skin crawl. Women are children, mothers, or slaves, worked to the bone. It is easy for this sort of setting to be overdone, overworked, so that it becomes a parody. In this book, it was well done, and it was threatening. Tierney doesn’t want to be a bride. When she returns from her grace year, she wants to be farmhand. But the men have other plans.

“I still don’t feel magical. I still don’t feel powerful. I feel forsaken.”

Out there in the wilderness, the magic begins. Reality starts to become undone and their weirdness creeps in. Tierney’s journey surprised me – sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a way that made me roll my eyes. It shocked me, the choices that the author made were unsettling and uncomfortable; somehow typical choices for a YA story and unusual.

I’d definitely recommend The Grace Year to anyone that wants a slightly darker YA story. It reminded me of Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go in terms of a few plot points and the general surreal and yet uncomfortable tone of the book.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of The Grace Year.

This book was amazing. It had a strong and important message and everyone should read this, especially women! It tells you that women (and girls) shouldn't be considered prey or competition but hope. As women, we should help each other more instead of perceiving someone as a threat and judge that person.

I didn't have any expectations when I first started listening to the audiobook on Scribd, but wow, this book blew my mind. I cried at the end. It was so well done I am still thinking about it. This book is definitely one of my favorites of the year, that's for sure. At the end of the audiobook, there is an interview with the author and I also enjoyed that immensely.

The Grace Year follows Tierney, a teen about to experience 'the grace year'. No one speaks about it, it's forbidden so she doesn't really know what's about to happen to her. She only knows she needs to survive. Her mother warns her that she can't trust anyone, not even herself and for a good reason!

Where she lives, women are seen as pets or property. Their goal is to get a veil from one of the men to be married and have sons. That's about it. They are punished harshly for simple things. Tierney, however, hates the idea of being married to someone and does everything she can to not get one. She wishes for a better life and future for women and I loved her for it.

There is a romance in this, and I was so invested! I loved them together. It reminded me of Lincoln and Octavia so that's how I pictured them <3 :

<picture>

(Thank you so much for letting me read and review an ARC via Netgalley)

Lord of the Flies meets The Handmaid's Tale.

Thanks Netgalley for the digital ARC!

I felt pretty certain going into this book that I would like it but I was surprised by how engrossed I became in the narrative after the first couple of chapters. There was so much speculative fiction in the text that had me second-guessing myself and the main character had powerful emotions that embedded themselves in me as I read through the text. It was stressful at times, to say the least, but the redemption and hope that comes through at different points is infinitely refreshing.

The reason this is a 4 star read, rather than a 5 star, is that there was some unbelievable moments and there was a romance that really turned me off at one point in the text. However, things turned around for a solid ending and this is a book I would definitely recommend to others.

I love Kim Liggett’s stories and if you haven’t read one yet, you are definitely missing out. The Grace Year is her newest and not only does it have a cover that I love, but the story itself was one I didn’t want to stop reading. I’m definitely not going to tell you everything or give anything away so feel free to read on.

As the summary states, in Garner County, girls are told they have magic that makes men and women act out of character and the only way they can be cleansed and prepared for marriage is to be sent off for their sixteenth year to a remote area in the woods so they can release that magic. Unfortunately, not everyone comes back intact…or even alive. You’re probably wondering why they don’t just run away when they are on their own. Unfortunately, they can’t because that would mean their families and younger sisters could be banished.

The world that Liggett created in this book was frightening. Not only are these girls deprived of any kind of ownership of themselves, but they are forced to leave their families and attempt to survive in the wilderness with dangers outside and inside the fence. Since no one is allowed to speak about their Grace Year, none of the girls headed out each year have any sense of what they are walking into or ability to prepare and as you can imagine, that only creates bigger problems.

Tierney is the main character and I loved everything about her. Living in a very repressive (to women) society, she clearly saw where the issues were and what was wrong but as a young woman headed out to her own Grace Year, she doesn’t really feel like she can make a change in her village. Lucky for her, Tierney’s parents and sister did everything they could to prepare her without breaking any rules. Unlucky for Tierney, she is headed to her Grace Year with a girl (Kiersten) who is very angry with her due to the fact that her best friend, and the boy who will take over leading the county, Michael, has chosen to marry Tierney instead of her. As you can imagine it doesn’t create a great start to their year.

Initially the things Tierney learned from her parents help to get some initial things set up but as the days go by, she finds that those who were initially behind her to make their space livable, eventually trickle over to Kiersten’s group who are only interested in expelling their magic and become crazed. Just to make things even more interesting, the girls aren’t supposed to go outside the fencing because there are Poachers in the woods that are waiting to capture and kill the girls to then sell their body parts on the black market. When something happens to put Tierney on the outs with the other girls, she finds herself in a position she never thought she would be in. And no, I’m not going to say anything about it because you really have to read it to believe all the things!

The secondary characters in this book were all interesting and necessary. Each one plays a critical part in Tierney’s story and get her from the first to the last page. Trust me when I say that there are some you will love and some you will really hate…yes, hate. I can’t even tell you everything about them because I don’t want to ruin any bit of this story. As Tierney’s year comes to a close, she learns so much about herself and the girls around her. She also finds herself in an unexpected position that she has to figure her way out of.

That’s about all I can say about this book without giving anything away. It has a fast pace and a great story that once you pick it up, you won’t want to put it down until you get to the end. Just brace yourself because Liggett doesn’t take it easy on her readers and if you’re like me, when you hit the end of this book, you’re going to be looking to see if there is more because I really wish there were. Liggett has become an auto-buy author for me and if you enjoy a good dystopian, you should pick this book up when you can.

When a girl turns 16 she begins her 'Grace Year". This year is when the girls are banished out into the wild to release their "wildness" before they come back and get married. Some come back and some die. What happens when Tierney leaves for her grace year? It had so many twists that it will keep you on the edge of your seat. Very interesting concept and good book.

This book delves into the world of young women and what happens to young women when they live in a society that does not value them. This book is a feminist novel for teens and it does an impressive job at that.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. NOW FOR THE REVIEW WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ENDING? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE OK WITH THAT? That was epic and awesome and great and I can go on. Such a great reminder of the Hunger Games yet nothing like it so I will not compare, I just love something different! The h is awesome sauce and the witch deserved what she got! WILL THERE BE A SEQUEL?

A Sci-Fi-Fantasy you may be familiar with and yet rings so different, this is Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year.
I loved this book. I hated this book all at the same time. I hated it because it was like reading Lord of The Flies female style, I loved it because the story was well told, and so different from Lord Of The Flies without a outcome.

Tierney, is a girl who doesn’t fit in. She, like all the rest of the girls in her community are told constantly they are the weaker sex. Men rule their world. Then comes the Grace Year, the year you are chosen, “...the boys...join the men in the main barn to trade and barter our fates like cattle” to be promised in marriage, and then sent off for a year to “lose” their powerful, dangerous magic out into the wilderness or so the girls are told. They aren’t allowed to talk about the Grace Year. It is forbidden, they only snatch bits and pieces from their mothers, other girls who have returned home and their injuries. The superstitions of the men are staggeringly controlling.

Just like Lord of the Flies there is fighting, team siding, and not sweetness that is expected from girls who are 16 and ready to navigate their own families or lives. The cover, Pink, is not what you think it should be after chapter 3 unless you are thinking faded blood. The true habits of women under extreme pressures to live, to return home, comes out in unimaginable ways.

Ms. Liggett spins a tale so dark, so well envisioned that you still feel the after effects long after you have finished the book. I would walk out of my home looking around corners for days. This book is masterly told. It’s Dystopian at its best,

I wish I enjoyed this one as much as others did.
I'm not sure why I didn't. I really liked the idea, I liked the world it was set in, and I liked the story, but I'm not sure if the execution was up to par with what the story needed. The pacing wasn't to my taste, I couldn't stand the protagonist for a solid chunk of the text, and all throughout I kept wondering about other parts of the world than what the story's focus was at that time. The entire book felt a bit unpolished, and it didn't exactly keep my attention.
This wasn't for me, at least at this moment. I see myself giving it another shot in the future.

Once a year girls are sent outside the compounds of their county, to live within the grace year. The grace year is a time for the girls to burn off all their "magic" to not ensnare men and deceive others within their community. When the girls leave for their grace year they're hopeful but apprehensive of the year to come. When the girls come back they're changed not only physical but mentally...that is to say if they even survive their grace year.

Tierney is the protagonist of this story. She's about to enter her grace year. Although she doesn't know what a grace year entails, no one who hasn't experienced it doesn't, she's grown up with scary stories of poachers looking to steal and kill grace year girls. Tierney feels like she's ready for anything and wants to come back to the community to work in the field not as a wife like so many others do. Before they leave for their grace year, some girls are given veils as a promise from a specific man or boy that they'll marry them if they return from their grace year. Tierney doesn't want anything to do with being veiled for it not only entraps her to a man within the community but also will force her to become a mother even if she doesn't want to. When Tierney heads off for her grace year, it turns out to be more than her and the other girls could even imagine.

This book is told in four parts that go along with the seasons. I had a hard time figuring out what season we were in without the titles of each section. I didn't feel like the story flowed as well for me as other readers. The story is a mix of Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies. I liked the character of Tierney for her defiance but that was about the only characteristic I liked of hers. I didn't feel like her character, or any character for that matter, were fleshed out as much as I'd hoped. Overall this book just fell short for me. I also wasn't a huge fan of The Handmaid's Tale so that could be part of my disinterest in this book. I just wanted more out of the story than I ultimately got from The Grace Year.

I loved this book! I definitely think it would great for teens to read! Its a mixture of The Handmaid's Tale and the Hunger Games. This kept me on the edge of my seat and reading til I finished it. I would recommend!

I received this ARC from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Book is written very well and after great beginning I couldn’t stop reading. But somewhere in the middle it slows down. Book sends us great message about all the women standing together for themselves. Definitely book that should be ready by everyone.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for a fair review.

Lives up to the premise in a magnificent way. I was in awe of the writing. The entire story had me gripped from the beginning. I would recommend this to anyone and everyone because wow. Stunning, important story for teens to read.

This was well-written and a fast read, but I found it SO derivative and heavy-handed. All of the notes I took read like "Handmaid's Tale vibes!" "Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies!" etc. The message was obviously that women need to band together and support each other under patriarchy, but it was hammered in in such an obvious, overdone way.

The Grace Year is haunting, and unsettling, and so achingly beautiful.

Tierney is a fiercely independent protagonist, which is a common trope in YA fiction, but one I don't think I've ever seen executed so well. The dynamic between the girls is simultaneously terrifying and captivating, and I was balanced on the edge of my seat until the final reveal. There is a looming sense of dread throughout the entire book, because while the reader may desperately want happiness for Tierney, this is not the kind of book that can deliver a conventionally happy ending and still be satisfying. And yet, the ending we get is so very perfect, so needed, that I know I will never forget this story.

In short, The Grace Year is a book that I think all women should read. And, frankly, I think all men should read it too.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Every year, sixteen year old girls enter their Grace Year. During this, they either become a bride or are to spend the rest of their life working before they are banished to get rid of their magic. Tierney James is entertaining her Grace Year. All her life, she's wanted a different life than what society expects of her, but it's going to be harder to break from that mold than she thought.

The beginning gripped my attention as I was really getting into the world and trying to piece together everything. The middle dragged a little in places as did parts of the end, but even then I was still curious enough to keep going through the parts that dragged for me.

The Grace Year had a lot going on. It is a dark, gory story that is a frustrating read as Liggett describes the patriarchy and more background on the world is explored. Misogyny throughout this book is thick and at times hard to get through as I can't grip my head around how anyone could really think that way.

There was a romance in the story that I didn't find necessary and wish it wasn't in there. It felt added in for the sake of being there. It felt like it was there to look pretty and really nothing else. The book could easily have done without it.

The Grace Year is a decent read, but I'm not sure how much it will make a lasting impression.

Incredible mix of the Handmaid's Tale, Lord of the Flies and the Village. Very current in today's culture. Highly recommend.

“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.”

I was so fortunate to receive a Netgalley ARC of Kim Liggett’s The Grace Year, a perfect mash-up of all the best pieces of Lord of the Flies, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Hunger Games. In Garner County, men rule, and women’s “magic” is the only threat to a utopian state where women can serve as childbearers and laborers. To ensure that society continues unscathed, all sixteen-year-old girls are sent on out of civilization for a “grace year” before they return home to take up their adult duties, whether that be marriage or labor. However, the grace year is more than its name suggests, for girls return at the end of the year having been hunted by trappers, bearing scars (at best) or chopped up in tiny bottles (at worst), yet all are forbidden to discuss it. When Tierney James turns sixteen, she is determined to survive, but what she doesn’t expect is that it’s not so much the outside forces but what the girls do to themselves that cause the most damage.

This book was a thrill ride that I could not put down. I loved how it mixed the heart-pounding action of Hunger Games with the introspection inherent in Lord of the Flies and The Handmaid’s Tale. Tierney is an easy character to cheer for, a girl who is fully aware of her society’s dystopian leanings but who has no idea how to affect change beyond surviving the brutality of her grace year. I loved how honest this book was, at the same time showing women as a force of change as well as a means to keep society rigid and male-centered.

The only reason for a four-star rating had to do with the writing style. I am generally not hyperfocused on syntax, but Liggett’s continual return to the same sentence structure began to get a little distracting at about the midpoint of the novel. For example, on one page, readers find the following starts to paragraphs: “Tightening my grip on the axe, I crawl forward...”, “Walking onto the ice, I wonder how far…”, “Peering over my shoulder, I can’t make out his features…”, “Lowering my chin, I square my feet…” Once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice the way that Liggett started many of her sentences with gerund phrases, and it took me out of the plot at inopportune moments.

In the end, Tierney’s struggle for justice, for love, for understanding, and for survival was a story that was nearly impossible to put down. The Grace Year is a must-order for high school libraries, especially as a spotlight title for their dystopian sections.

I was blown away by this book! This is the first book I’ve read by Kim Liggett and cannot wait to read additional works written.

There are poachers waiting for their chance to grab one of the girls, and the brutal elements alone will test their will to survive. But their greatest threat might be closer than they think. It is believed that girls have magic within them that can lure men away and drive women mad with jealousy.

I really enjoyed reading The Grace Year! The writing drew me in right away and flowed so well. I was immediately immersed into the world the author has created . This is definitely a must-read for 2019!