This book was one of my most anticipated reads for the year, and I was willing to sell one of my limbs just to read an advanced copy. In case y’all were wondering, my limbs are in tact, and I didn’t have to do anything questionable to get a hold of this coveted beauty. That being said, it’s been a few days since I finished reading this one, and I am still at a loss for unbelievable this book was. This book is horrifying, raw, twisted…and yet, it’s also beautiful and hopeful.

In Garner County, females possess magic that brings out the most animalistic urges in men. In order to circumvent this, at the age of sixteen, the girls are banished to the wilderness to rid their bodies of this magic, so they can blossom into the subservient, well-mannered women that are expected in society.

This year of survival in the wilderness is deemed the grace year. No one ever speaks of the grace year and what transpires during that time, but there are whispers. The dangers of the grace year are real. Not all of the girls will survive the wilderness, the poachers at the outskirts of camp ready to sell pieces of their bodies, or each other.

The Grace Year is an all consuming, atmospheric read. Liggett’s writing evoked so many emotions while I was tearing through the pages. My heart literally ached because the despair from the girls was palpable. I also loved that this book didn’t shy away from the dark side of female relationships. These girls are willing to commit unspeakable acts when their own survival is at stake.

I don’t want to give any more of the plot away because this is one of those books that you need to experience the spectrum of emotions that will come while reading it. This book is incredible, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the ARC. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.

4.5 out of 5 stars!

The Grace Year is one of those dark and difficult books that I always think I  want to read, and then when I start it I think, well, welcome nightmares. I had nightmares for a solid week after reading this.  Set in an unknown time and place, a village is preparing for the Grace Year. When the village girls enter their 16th year, they sent off for the Grace Year, a time of releasing their dark magic into the wild so they will be ready to be sweet and submissive wives when they return.  Not all the girls will return and those that do will be married upon their return. No one speaks of the Grace Year. Mother’s don’t discuss it with their daughters The sisters of the girls who don’t return are punished by banishment from the village to the unsavory and wild outskirts.  

Tierney wants more from life.  Angry at the lack of choice in her own life, she resents having to marry and hopes instead to work in the dairies or mills.  When her childhood friend shocks the village by choosing her to be his future wife, Tierney is even angrier. He knew she never wanted to marry.  He knew she resented having to be submissive to a husband and spend her nights, “legs spread, arms flat, eyes to God.” She wanted her own life. Now she is forced to spend her Grace Year knowing she will return to be a wife.  

Unprepared for what they will find, the village girls are marched away on a grueling trip to the island where they will spend the next year.  Dodging poachers, murderers, and other dark things from the forest, these pampered girls are unprepared for handling the wilderness. All but Tierney.  Her father spent her childhood teaching her basic survival and medical first aid. It’s her knowledge of building rain barrels and chopping wood that should have endeared the girls to her, but instead, the other girls are convinced of the myth that they will all harness their magic and become subservient to the horrible Kiersten.  What follows is days of hazing, torture, and instilling fear into the other girls. When Tierney tries to guide the girls toward survival, Kiersten becomes threatened and throws her out of the camp. What will follow will completely upend everything Tierney has ever known and believed in.  

There are a ton of twists and turns within the book and I don’t want to give any of it away, but please know that this book is dark.  It’s incredibly written and I loved it, but there were many times I had to put it down, walk away for a while, and come back to it. But it’s definitely worth reading.  It’s really good-just really dark.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.

Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆☆☆
Spoiler-Free review.

There are times where I’ll add a disclaimer to my review, stating how I’m not sure how to review the novel. Added to this issue, I wish to maintain a spoiler-free review, simply because I went into it blindly and found a higher entertainment value due to it.

When I see the tagline of a novel featuring the titles of novels by other authors, I tend to steer clear, my ethics getting rubbed raw. It’s just a personal pet-peeve of mine, how you’re not to compare yourself to others. But in this case, I tend to agree. It’s helpful for readers to know that The Grace Year is an amalgamation of The Handmaid’s Tale and Lord of the Flies.

As a feminist, this novel was beyond difficult to read without being filled with rage. However, as a feminist, this novel had a spark of hope at the ending, where women were empowered instead of subjugated.

Set during an indiscriminate era, in a world built around the false belief systems of religion, where men are the voice of God and women are reduced to nothing but the harbingers of sin, all to keep the men in power and the women under their constant control.

Every year, the mature girls (I believe it was sixteen years of age), an entire grouping of girls are segregated, some chosen to become wives, whereas others are chosen to become workers or outcast for the males’ pleasure. These girls are coming into their magic (the ability to have a voice, see logic, and notice how everything isn’t as it seems). They are sent off to endure their grace year (to break them into their role of subservience).

What happens during the grace year is tragic, heinous, gut-wrenching, and beyond difficult to read. It’s a mix of environmental factors and mental suggestion, along with actual evil human beings. The girls aren’t thought as human beings, but ITs, evil creatures who need to expel their magic.

What I struggled so hard with the world building, not so much how twisted and intriguing I found it… the mothers and fathers sent their daughters there, a choice made for offspring in their care. What monsters they truly would be, to send your own child to certain death to satisfy a perverse need to be in control. The outcast women of that age group weren’t subjected to the grace year, so how come the Poachers didn’t cull their own mothers and sisters for never releasing their magic? As children were born outside the Country. The Poachers not seeing these young women as humans, so why did they see their own sisters as humans? Why did only the girls from town have magic?

Another hard facet to digest is how God-fearing people had no issue murdering without a second thought, as long as it suited their own needs. The need for power. The need to balance the genders, so there would be more men than women.

Absolutely fascinating and equally frustrating, I read The Grace Year in a single sitting, unable to put it down. Equally feeling compassion for the girls, while also loathing how weak the majority were for believing the lies, never questioning the conditioning, never standing up for themselves (at their encampment).

The novel itself proves how we women are our own worst enemies, the internalized misogyny running so deep we don’t recognize it. We may not be separated by the males in this day and age, but our judgments, vocal admonishments, and jealous hostility toward our sisters is what keeps us from banning together in solidarity. Our sick need for male validation, as if our fellow women are our competition. This mindset making it possible to be subjugated by the very ones we all so desperately need to validate us.

Young Adult age-range: 14+ due to on-scene violence and fade-to-black sexual situations.

I certainly felt the references that have been made to a female Lord of The Flies, The Power and The Handmaid’s Tale. This novel was a dystopian thriller in this same vein. Overall, I enjoyed the story and liked the characters. I appreciated the independence and ability of survival that the female protagonist had throughout but that she still required trust in someone else in order to succeed. I also thought that the love interests were realistic given the circumstances. The character development and growth in the supporting characters could have been explored more thoroughly, in that some of these stories were interesting and it would have been great to see more about how these young women interacted once they returned from their year.
The most disappointing part of the novel was some of the scenes involving the girls in the Grace year camp were confusingly written and therefore difficult to follow. It felt like a scene would begin with a character headed into solitude and the next thing taking place would be a group of them arguing, fighting or other similar action. These areas were not as well written in my opinion as the other parts of the book.
Overall, I enjoyed the book as a whole as well as the message that it sent to women (and the men in their lives).
#TheGraceYear #NetGalley #StMartinsPress

I got on board with THE GRACE YEAR for the first 15-20%, I was intruigued with village life, the dystopia and the female oppression themes. I also wanted to know what the heck this grace year was, oh so mysteriously referred to as it was.

I stick by my early status on Goodreads from that point where I said ‘hello, Lady of the Flies’. The grace year was just that, a descent into crazyiness, madness and destruction. I found it incredibly discomforting to read, which is not to say that discomfort is unwelcome, I enjoy that in a well written book. However, this was an unpleasant experience with a storyline that was unwieldy and didn’t hang together.

Things that I could not buy into included Tierney, the protagonist as she reached the heights of grand integrity whilst all around her crumbled. Ryker and Tierney…just no. What even was that, Stockholm syndrome? Michael after the grace year felt totally out of character and too convenient. I did like Kiersten’s character for the general evil and nastiness. You can see that I wasn’t enamoured by a lot.

The plot line felt to be general chaos, disconnection and what the hell moments, but not in a good way. There were a bunch of disconnected parts, with a narrative that did not coherrently mesh together. I did not highlight a thing in this book as the writing did not jump out at me. I felt like I just had to power through to the end and I did.

I realise that many have enjoyed this book already and I would say maybe it is just me but I do think the writing, characters and story development are weak. I will stand by that.

Thank you to St Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for the early review copy.

Oh, my word, did this book turn for me. The premise seemed really interesting, and I really enjoyed parts of it. But then, all of a sudden, I really started to dislike it.

The Grace Year is about a society in which girls are believed to gain magical abilities after puberty, and are sent away into the woods to endure the mysterious Grace Year, after which they return without powers to either marry the man who has claimed them or to be sent to the fields to work.

The book follows Tierney, who I found to be a likable enough main character for, again, about the first half of the book. She has no desire to marry and does not expect to be claimed before her Grace Year, which is exactly what she wants. However, she is unexpectedly claimed by her best friend, Michael, despite her communicating to him that she did not want to get married and that she found the idea of being claimed humiliating and sexist (which it obviously is).

Alright, so this review is going to be incredibly spoilerific, because I don't know how else to articulate the things that made me so frustrated about the book, so be warned.

1. I really liked the worldbuilding and the idea behind the story. It felt sort of like The Handmaid's Tale adapted for YA, which I enjoyed. There was sort of a mystery as to whether or not these girls actually have magic (since most of them seem to think they do) and I liked the survivalism aspect once the girls got to the Grace Year.

2. For some insane reason, this book is literally only divided into five sections. Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer, and The Return. There are no chapters. Apparently in physical ARCs, there is a little design to give a little more division. I had an eARC, and it was just continuous content. Formatting should make an attempt to make the reading experience easy for the reader, and this made it hard and frustrating.

3. Michael claiming Tierney as his wife stuck me as the kind of move that could be good or bad. And initially, it seemed like Liggett did a good job with it. Even if he was trying to save her from someone else claiming her, he was still going against her wishes himself. He was still participating in the system. Tierney makes this point both to Michael's face and in the narration, and I thought it was handled well. BUT THEN. Tierney gets back from the Grace Year pregnant with love interest 1's baby (we'll get there, I promise). Michael pulls the same shit and claims he impregnated her in their shared dreams which is obviously her magic ability, and then immediately, like five minutes later, exiles a little girl because her sister had the gall to drown, leaving her body unaccounted for. HE IS NOT A GOOD GUY. Just because he is debatably good to our main character does not mean he isn't perpetuating this violent system. And using that violent system to essentially force he girl he UNREQUITEDLY loves into marriage with him. The fact that Tierney ends up "in love" with him after several months of "marriage" made me want to pull my hair out. This fact alone would have made me drop my rating to 1 star.

4. Speaking of which, love interest 1. Ryker is a poacher who literally kills Grace Year girls for a living. He has no problem with this, except Tierney's father saved the life of one of his buds, so he saves her life in order to repay that debt. Aside from this GLARING character flaw, Ryker has absolutely no personality whatsoever. He "saves her life" from a situation he caused, and then keeps her drugged up and tied up in his house for weeks. Eventually, the two finally make any effort at all to communicate, and Tierney agrees to stay until she's better. At this point, there is LITERALLY A TIME JUMP and all of a sudden they're in love. Out of NOWHERE. Can you tell that this made me a tad upset? They get found out by another poacher, who tells Tierney she has to leave or he'll kill Ryker, so she goes back to the Grace Year girls, but not before spending her last night getting knocked up with Ryker's baby. Again, he makes assumptions about her, announces to others that they're together without asking, and generally doesn't respect her autonomy. Great job, feminist dystopia book.

5. The pacing of this book is just...bad. The Autumn section takes up almost half of the book, which might make sense because it includes both our introduction of Tierney's life pre-Grace Year and the claiming ceremony, on top of the first few weeks of the Grace Year. This was my favorite section. Then it goes insane. Major plot points get blasted through in a couple sentences and time passes faster and faster. I just wish it had been better balanced.

So, overall, this book could have been good. But for a book that describes itself as being like the Handmaid's Tale, it lacks all of the nuance Atwood offered. Many of the threads are just kind of discarded at the end as something for the next generation to deal with, and I was just so frustrated with so many of Liggett's decisions that I would have DNFed this book at around 75% if it hadn't been an ARC. If you're looking for another feminist dystopia as good as those name-dropped in the summary, you'll be sorely disappointed.

The Handmaid’s Tale meets Lord of the Flies and Mean Girls. Plus magic, or at least enough superstition and lack of education to look like magic. This book will make you uncomfortable, it’s supposed to; it will also make you angry. The author does a great job of making her feel everything the main character does; the helplessness and the rage. This book is phenomenal.
I wish there was some backstory, how did the world get to this? The transition between scenes is jarring. I hope it’s cleaner in the finished book.
ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have already seen much hype around this book, and I must say that it's mostly worthy of it. It's The Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies with characteristics of The Power and Handmaid's Tale. I was pulled into the story from the first page and the further into the book I read, the further I got pulled in.

Of course I would've liked more backstory as how the County came to be, why the Grace Year was implemented, deeper character development and backstory however, it is a YA book and I don't expect that to be a strong focus in this genre. It will definitely pull girls in and they'll find a hero, a sister and a friend in Tierney. A very entertaining and absorbing read which I would recommend to any who enjoy YA dystopia narratives.

So this wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. This is more LORD OF THE FLIES than THE HANDMAID’S TALE, though there’s definitely shades of the latter, and the main problem is I didn’t like LORD OF THE FLIES. And neither did I like the all-female version of it, either.

There’s also a weird sorta-THE HUNGER GAMES element that I couldn’t unsee, once I kind of picked up on it, but maybe that’s because I just wanted to see some good in this. Something that didn’t feel like a strange altered-state fever dream of random and nothing and awful.

So much of this world, this societal structure, feels.. not fleshed out or vague for the sake of suspense and uncertainty. At least up until a certain point. And afterwards, it’s just, like.. that’s it? That’s all we get?

The backbone of the story, the theme or message that we earn by making it through the hazy plot, which you don’t see until almost the very end, is worth celebrating. There are elements that feel important, because they are, but they are mired in.. everything else. Honestly, I’m just baffled. I’m disappointed. And I’m not sorry to say there was some skimming because this wasn’t exactly how I wanted my Friday night of reading to go : both bored and confused. But at this point, I’m definitely an outlier, because so many people are buzzing about this (heck, we were buzzing about this in our anticipated list!), so, this might be worth picking up if only to give it a try.

** I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. **

Wow!! This was such a great book. I was taken in from the very beginning. Tierney was a strong lead character and I love the interaction that she had with the other characters. I felt like this was a very original storyline which gave me vibes of Handmaid’s Tale, Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies. Just great experience all around.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 "your eyes are wide open" Stars!

The Grace Year has left me speechless. Touted as The Handmaid's Tale meets Lord of the Flies, this unique novel pulled feelings and emotions from me that are hard to put into words. Tierney James is the heroine of this dystopian story. She dreams of a better future for her society where the women's lives aren't dependent on being chosen by a man. Where they can have their own opinions separate from men without being viewed as anarchists or usurpers. A world in which women can own their individuality and sensuality without it being viewed as some type of forbidden magic.

The Grace Year chronicles the year that Tierney and the other sixteen year old girls from her village (or county as they call it) are sent away into the wild together to burn away their magic before they return and settle into their lives as wives. If they weren't chosen by a man to be married, they will be assigned to a job when they return but they will still have no voice for themselves. Basically, in their society, only the men's opinions matter. When the girls leave for their "Grace Year," they know that some will not return. There are poachers who try to capture and kill them as well as other dangers. What they don't realize is that are often a danger to themselves and each other.

This book simply mesmerized me. I could hardly put it down. At times I couldn't believe that the girls reacted to one another the way that they did. Then I remembered growing up and how girls sometimes acted during middle and high school and it wasn't such a far stretch. There were so many messages tucked into this novel, but the most glaring one to me is that instead of tearing one another down, women need to support and build one another up. There are too many obstacles against us by nature, we don't need to be each other's downfall. We need to be each other's support and lift one another up. Also, there were undertones about social hierarchies, forbidden love and more.

This is undoubtedly one of my favorite reads for 2019 and I will be recommending it wherever I can. I absolutely loved everything about this book -- even the tears that it made me shed. I'll be reading it again soon because I feel that I may have missed some details the first time around...and I loved it that much!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I finally finished , took me some days because of school but let me tell you that you should pre order , or order this book ASAP you won’t regret it! I didn’t fall into i dull moments. I won’t compare it to hunger games even tho I’ve never read it. Kim did a great job writing and delivering her message. That ending , last chapter was just wow ! Please buy you won’t regret it ! More thorough review to come. It’s my first time reading Kim’s book and I’m glad it was my first.
Thank you netgalley for giving me a nearly copy

The Grace Year is getting a lot of hype because it's already been optioned for a film. In this case, the hype is well deserved. It's a gripping, creepy, devastating book.

In Garner County, the patriarchy reigns supreme. Although women outnumber men, it's men who have all power. Women can be wives or workers (in approved professions) once they reach their teen years. Women who don't fit the mold or have been punished for transgressions against the social order are banished to the outskirts, where they become prostitutes.

Every year, all of the 16-year-old girls in the county are sent away to remote location in the wild for a full year. It's believed that teenage girls have magic that needs to be expunged from them, and this year in the wild, know as the Grace Year, is supposed to do this. The girls are told nothing about what will happen during that year, but they know that not everyone survives the year. Oh, and there are poachers who hunt the girls, kill them, and sell their body parts.

This book was fantastic. I tore through it. It's a little bit of The Handmaid's Tale, Lord of the Flies, and The Hunger Games, with a whiff of the Salem witch trials thrown in. I won't say much about the plot because I think it's best for the reader to go into the story knowing as little as the girls do when they begin their Grace Year.

This book is brutal, but then so is the patriarchy. The book does really well at showing how patriarchy pits women against each other, and how it can't survive without women buying into the system. The heroine Tierney is a great character. She's not perfect, but she's strong and she recognizes that things are seriously messed up in the county.

"...I only feel tired. Tired of hating each other. Tired of feeling small. Tired of being used. Tired of men deciding our fate, and for what?"

Read this book and prepare to feel a lot of rage.

I've read one other Liggett book (Blood and Salt) and really enjoyed the horror of it so I was excited to read this one. This one is horror and magic and fantasy and dystopia and potential reality. I loved her writing, the way she described things was so unique! "Kiersten shushes the girls behind her. 'I'll keep my fingers crossed you get a veil tonight, Tierney,' she says with a smile that registers on the back of my neck." Love that!!

I guessed some of what happened but was also surprised by other things! This book keeps you on your toes! The society these girls grew up in was horrendous and violent and what they did to each other in honor of tradition was appalling. The book gave me Wicker Man/Midsommar vibes as well as female Lord of the Flies and dystopian Handmaid's Tale. Hunger Games a little less but there are some aspects in common there.

There's a lot to say that can't be said until you've read the book so I'll leave it here. It was a wild ride and I will be reading more Liggett books!

I really enjoyed this young adult, dark, dystopian novel. It was difficult to put down and I thought I knew what was going to happen but boy was I wrong. The story is told from a single point of view of the Grace Year, a time when 16 year old girls are sent to live alone in the woods to rid themselves of the power they have that could be used to control the men. An interesting and fast paced book about a patriarchal society and the women that live there. There are a lot of elements that come together nicely at the end and a lot of surprises. This is one of the better YA dystopian books that have come out recently.

The Grace Year is a Young Adult Dystopian. The story is dark and disturbing. Sixteen year old girls are sent away for a year, the "grace year", to cleanse themselves of the magic they possess and return home purified. Of course this is right after the males of the County claims a wife. Not only do the girls have to protect themselves from each other, but there are ghosts and poachers they have to watch out for too.

It could be because I received an ARC for this book and was reading it on my kindle, but the formatting was hard to read. There were no chapters and pause breaks. I felt the characters were were weak and lacking development.

It did remind me of the Lord of the Flies.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Kim Liggett for a copy of "The Grace Year" in exchange of an honest review.

But isn't that how every horrible thing begins? Slow. Inspid. A twisting of the screw

I can't seem to find proper words to describe how much I love this book and how much this dark, gory and violent story means to me. This is the kind of feminist dystopia I craved back in the days when I was getting lost in The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Legend and many others, yet never been aware of how much I needed it.

In the patriarchal world of Garner County, girls are banished to the woods at the age of sixteen to spend their Grace Year there. A year they need to unleash and get rid of their violent magic, survive the harsh environment and try not to get themselves killed by various enemies lurking at the gates, including each other as well.

I completely adored the main character Tierney. I got nostalgic because she reminded me so much of my favourite Katniss Everdeen. These kind of brave, determined, skilled and a bit antisocial heroines easily manage to get to me and make me sympathise with them. I was mesmerised by the fact how throughout the book Tierney always managed to do the right things and put a higher calling first, helping the girls who did her wrong so many times I can't even count it.

This is a successful portrayal of girls who have been prisoned to silence, their voice insignificant in a society that gives them no choice, and what happens during a year they get to be the Gods themselves. Comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale and Lord of the Flies are completely accurate, but I liked how this book managed to have a voice on it's own.

It's story that describes girls at their lowest, full of rage, hate and self-betrayal, and at the same time cherishes womahood and all the wonderful, complicated relationships woman have with each other. This is undoubtedly one of my favourites of the year and I hope this one becomes big. It really deserved it.

Thanks to the Edelweiss and Wednesday Books for providing me with eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

So I've seen people compare this book to Lord of the Flies and The Handmaid's Tale. While I 100% agree with the Lord of the Flies comparison, the book's similarities to The Handmaid's tale a few and far in between. The only real similarity being society using religion as an excuse to oppress and abuse women (which is simply historically accurate... and I'm pretty sure this is an alternate history type-book, not a dystopian one), and the tidbit where we are told how women are supposed to lay during sex (being very similar to the way the Handmaids do). I'd say it's more similar to The Hunger Games than The Handmaid's Tale.
This is a very dark and gory book. I'm not kidding. There are graphic torture-porn type scenes, but no graphic sex scenes or swearing because that's just blasphemous... or something. You may also get confused at certain parts of the book where all the girls (including the narrator who's head we're stuck in) are tripping hard on a hallucinogen. Best way to describe it: fever dream. So, you know, be prepared.
And finally, I don't know what kind of an ending I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't that one. Although it fit the overall theme of the book, so, yes it was a good end.

Teenage girls are dangerous creatures. To prevent them from driving men mad, all the sixteen-year-olds in Tierney's village are banished for a year, sent into the wilderness to burn out their magic and return as suitably chastened wives, laborers, or sex workers. If they survive. Poachers stalk them, rendering magic-rich girls' body parts into potions for the villagers' consumption. Even more dangerous are the girls themselves. Tierney's fierce independence and unladylike childhood are not enough to protect her from the horrors of the Grace Year. A viscerally upsetting examination of power, gender, and misogyny.

Some things I enjoy in general:

• Dystopians
• Awesome book covers
• Fiercely feminist media
• Kim Liggett

You see where I'm going with this? The Grace Year has basically every hallmark I look for in a book. From grittiness, to competition, to forbidden love, it basically runs the gamut of awesome. I am going to delve deeper into some of what made this one extra good for me!

• Stunning exploration of the patriarchy pitting women against each other. Oh this happens constantly, and throughout time. But the way the author pares it down to the basics of quite literally forcing the women to mistrust each other is an incredible allegory to our current society.

• Such gritty, dark undertones set the ambiance of the book perfectly. I mean, for a pretty large portion of the book, the girls are living in actual filth and squalor. But it just feels so... demoralizing. Which, of course, is the point. Liggett does a tremendous job of making the reader feel the desperation of the situation. More than that, she also makes us feel even the day to day weights that lie on the women's shoulders. So even when they're in a seemingly civilized environment, the dread permeates. It's fantastic.

• Tierney is awesome and impossible not to root for. I mean, she's super smart which is helpful, but she also acknowledges that her dad treating her a little better than other dads helped give her an advantage too. She's incredible from start to finish, flawed yet completely relatable. She has her friends and family who she's not keen on leaving for the Grace Year, but I mean, who is? And when she gets there... wow. All the complex relationships she forms will blow you away, no doubt.

• The turn it took, the end, it kind of blew my mind. I was sure I knew where this book was headed. I could not have been more wrong. And when I finished, I was floored. It took me a minute to figure out how I felt about it, (thanks to Emma for chatting about it with me)! I realized that I loved it, and the message it sent. I obviously have to be vague here but if you have read it... DM me or leave a comment or something because I have thoughts!

• It's just a good story. At the end of the day, this matters. A book can throw all the messages at you, but if you're bored, who cares. This book was not only profound, but was entertaining as hell, too.

Bottom Line: The more I think about this book, the more I love it. And trust that I have not stopped thinking about it since I read it.