I'd describe this book as a Lord of the Flies if they were all girls. I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what the "magic" would turn out to be. The girls from the town get sorted into wives, farm hands and basically prostitutes, but before they begin their "careers" they go away to an island where they try and survive for the year. It is all pretty gruesome and for that reason alone I would give it only 3 stars. If I could have read through my hands covering my face I would have. If you like horror, you'll give it a 5.

Unlike anything I've ever read before. The author definitely has a knack for transporting you into her world. Very talented and I will look for more of her work in the future!

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263520-the-grace-year" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Grace Year" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1548518877m/43263520.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263520-the-grace-year">The Grace Year</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6693411.Kim_Liggett">Kim Liggett</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2848837733">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Wow, interesting book. I received an advanced copy from NetGalley for an honest opinion. I enjoyed this book about young women (16 and older) coming into their womanhood or "magic power" so they are hurried and married off (if chosen) then sent off to a camp to survive for 1 year and rid them selves of their "magic". Of course, there is drama and the picking of sides. At times I felt I had missed something but kept reading and hoped it would make sense later. Despite this I liked the over all effect of the book. I would highly recommend this to those who like survival instinct books and young adult themed.
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THE GRACE YEAR is dark and chilling, familiar in theme and execution to its comps, while placing the characters in a uniquely isolated (but not unobserved) setting. This story was one in which you can often see what is coming next (such as why the girls are (in part) behaving the way they are), but that knowing did not take away from the narration. I sped through this book, drawn in by the main character and the author's capable storytelling.

whoa what the heck this book was fantastic! This book takes you and grabs you and doesn't let go until the very last word! If you feel hesitate towards this, don't, its awesome and is gonna be the new teen crave!
Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a honest review.

Do not be fooled by the excessively pink cover, this is not a sweet story and the characters do not care to be likeable and cherished by the reader. It’s a wild, wild world and so are the girls in it. I have not read a YA dystopian in over a year, but this one reminded me why I used to actively seek out these types of stories. Because they are messy and ugly and dramatic and despite all that, or maybe because of it, I am fascinated.
In Tierney’s dystopian society, teenage girls are believed to have powers that are a danger to the men. Every year, girls are either claimed by men to become wives or unclaimed and left to find work. But before their status officially changes, they are sent as a group into the forest for a year to squash their unnatural powers. Some of them return, others don’t. This is what happens to Tierney.
This is a story of survival. You’d think it would be about women surviving men or the wild mainly, but actually, in this particular case, women need to survive one another. Indeed, in a society where women are not allowed to be mad at men, the only people they can turn their anger against are other women. It’s a sad and disturbing thought. But to make it more disturbing, women are such possessions that there are poachers who kill power-wielding girls in order to sell their parts to consumers who believe consuming these young girls will improve their health. Cannibalism, ladies and gents.
I’m not surprised Kim Liggett has written horror stories in the past after finishing in this book, and I’m sure more are to come, because this was terrifying. It’s unrealistic and yet very realistic at the same time. I couldn’t imagine this happening in our society, but I had no trouble visualizing everything the author described. This is a story that I will not soon forget.

I was given this book by netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book was incredible. My very first 5 star read of the year. Everything about this book was amazing. The grace year takes you on am emotional journey of one girl who wants to change the world. I loved everything about this book. This is the best book of 2019 so far.

What began as a tale of arranged marriages turned into a futuristic story about mean girls. But instead of trying to blend in, Tierney rose above and stayed true to herself. After an outcasting in the middle of the settling in period of her Grace Year, Tierney chose to fight to survive. What she didn’t expect to find was a lesson about life, love and compassion.

The ending was surprising but very realistic. Nothing was tied up in a neat package, it represented life in its best form, raw and ever-changing. A great read that I devoured in a single day. Not to be missed for any fan of dystopian novels

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with dystopian. Dystopian was all the rage at the time and was really the only thing I would read during that period in my life. The thing is with those dystopians that I cherished in my early years of high school, they were always set in the future.
Nowadays, I feel like dystopians are becoming hot again, but this time they are a fresh breath of air to the books that came out in let’s say 2010.
A lot of these dystopians, like The Grace Year, are about either women being deprived due to a misogynistic society or discrimination to certain people who have magic.
The Grace Year is marketed as The Handmaids Tale meets Lord of the Flies, which I can see some aspects of those books sprinkled in it.
When a girl turns sixteen years of age, she along with her peers go to an island and try to burn from their magic so they can go back to either become wives or to do manual labor.
However, this island is not safe. They are being hunted by poachers and skinned alive so their body parts can be put in an elixir back in their county. That is not the only danger. The danger is the girls having their first and last taste of freedom and turning on one another.
When I first read the synopsis for The Grace Year, I thought I really need to read that now. I went on Netgalley and put in a request, but it stayed pending for a bit. Yet, one day when I got on to the website, I saw it was for read now and put a new request in to automatically read it.
Boy, am I glad I did. I could not put this down. It’s gripping, horrifying, beautiful, and just amazing. The character growth in all the characters and the society was really well done.
This is something I highly, highly recommend for anyone to read. Plus, this makes one of my favorite books of 2019 list!

I'm a huge fan of dystopian fiction, so when I heard about this book I was very excited. It's about girls who are sent away for a year when they turn 16 to eliminate their magic. I really liked the concept of the storyline. However, I felt it was rushed and could have had more world building and character development. Overall, I enjoyed the book and all the twists at the end.

I received this as an ARC through Netgalley.

Wow! I'm speechless! Such a trip, with so many elements that are scary, cruel, disturbing, distorted, etc.!!!!! The end is hopeful, which is always a plus! Something I will continue to think about for a long time!

In the Grace Year, sixteen year old girls are either chosen by a man of the county for future wifehood or sentenced with a future that is considered even worse than being treated like chattel to the one they're forever yoked to. However, before they can start their bleak sentence, they are sent out to be purged of their supposed magic. In what feels like a heavy mix of the Salem witch trials, Lord of the Flies, and A Handmaid's Tale, we witness the girls turning on one another with a savagery that is startling and frightening to behold.
Tierney has been treated as an outcast most of her life and she goes into her grace year with a heavy sense of foreboding. In what becomes the deadliest popularity contest ever, she knows from the start that her outcast status will put a target on her back. The lengths that the girls go to, both to prove their own magic and to undermine the other girls, has no limits. The stakes continue to escalate throughout the story. The reader knows there is no blissful happy ending, and yet you hope beyond all hope that somehow, some way, the county will see the gross error of its ways.
I was left shaken after finishing this book (which I consumed in less than two days). The dystopian world depicted left me enraged at the injustice the author so painstakingly described. This is a book that will haunt me for years if not, possibly, the rest of my life.

This was one dystopian novel I actually loved! I couldn't put it down, I read it in one sitting. highly recommend.

The Grace Year was terrifying and I loved it. The story is at once outlandish and immediate. In The Grace Year's patriarchal society, girls spend their sixteenth year--the grace year--in the woods expelling the magic that tempts married men, but it's not the magic they need to fear. Liggett does an amazing job of building a claustrophobic setting while giving her characters room to grow, eventually remaking the shape of their world with the knowledge they gain. The main character Tierney has this fierce wretchedness at the beginning of the story that is fully realized as strength when she's caught in a maelstrom of hysteria and finds herself at the eye of the storm. I burned through this in hours and honestly feel like I've survived something. Please go read this. You won't be disappointed!

I received this ARC via NetGalley.

With the comparison being Handmaid’s Tale meets Lord of the Flies I thought this story would be something else.

The whole lead up and center of the story is the Grace Year where 16 year old girls are herded to this remote area to get rid of their ‘magic’ before getting married or entering the workforce.

This is where I thought we would get the most of the feminist inclusive kind of action. Here where there are no rules and supervision allowing for all the pent up aggression to rise up. And of course aggression does happen but things aren’t questioned. The main rule within the community is that they aren’t allowed to talk about the Grace Year and what happens. And growing up under these strict rules would be hard to break even now but it was so quick for the majority of all the girls to just believe the queen b and go along with whatever senseless thing she said and did. This started long before they started drinking the ‘cool aid’. I can see why some would follow and believe this.

I have a love hate relationship with dystopian I hate reading them but I love having read them. I love discussions that arise while reading and the commentary of how their society is and how it reflects our own. With this the commentary I found from the reading is how the women are treated like a commodity that only serves one purpose, birthing children. There are a lot of little lines that the protagonist thinks that speak so adequately such as, “why are men the only ones to make the rules?” and how they’ve all agreed to live like this. There are no other discussions especially with each other over these injustices and it just makes me sad.
Another topic is how society's stay in place and all the cogs and wheels that need to stay in rotation to keep these practices alive is what I found frightful.

Overall, this is a quick read that is intriguing on some level but lacks a lot of depth. This is where my disappointment comes in because I was lead to believe that this would be on the same level as the books it is compared to but it falls short.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

WOW!!! This book seemed really good, but I felt that the dystopian story had been a bit played out. I didn’t think that there could really be anything new out there that wouldn’t end up sounding like an echo of “The Hunger Games” et al. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong in my life! This book was a fresh spin on the genre, gripping, magical, and dangerous all at once! I was blown away at how many different ways it could go and it didn’t bore, only thrilled me as I raced through the pages. This book has made it solidly in my top five all time book list, and I’m genuinely excited to read it again to see the other layers of nuance. Don’t miss this book, you seriously owe it to yourself! Author is a new hero and I’m definitely in the fan club! Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my free ARC, it blew my mind!!

This book is available for 72 hours on NetGalley as an ARC and WOW! I didn’t even have to TRY to finish it because I could NOT put it down! With the flavors of “A Handmaid’s Tale,” this book had so many twists, turns, and surprises. I’m usually pretty good at predicting things but even I was shocked a few times! This is a must read when it comes out officially!

This book is dark, twisted, beautiful and awful and I can’t recommend it enough!

“The Grace Year” finds Tierney approaching her 16th year where her magic comes into full bloom and she along with the other girls her age will be exiled in order to keep the men from becoming consumed by their gifts, but with a dream she can’t shake and an overwhelming desire to survive, Tierney faces her year in the unknown and finds that sometimes the truth can be found if one simply opens their eyes.

Wow I know so many people are going to have better written reviews and god bless them because I am a wreck of emotions and I want to discuss it all without spoiling anything no matter how badly I want to!

This is one of those books that’s terrifying in the sense that we’ve all been these girls only our “grace year” happens for a lot longer and unfortunately before our 16th birthday. The entire dynamic is one that we’ve all had to deal with at one point or another and I think that’s why the ending is so beautiful because we’ve all had a moment like that too where this unspoken look shared amongst women carried so much weight and understanding and it’s something no man can take.

There’s so much poetic symmetry between this dystopian world and our reality that I don’t think I’ll be able to shake it for a long time and if I’m being honest I don’t really want to. My only question is to anyone who has read it and it concerns the final line because for me I’m taking it in a positive direction because I think I’d be even more destroyed if it wasn’t a hopeful ending but either way the strength of women is unparalleled and I will shout it from the rooftops until my dying day.

This is a book that is so important and one that I hope everyone reads and with that I leave you with a quote from another work that encompasses this novel perfectly, “here’s to strong women, may we know them, may we be them, may we raise them”.

**special thanks to netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review!**

It has been a very long time since I read a book that I loved so much as The Grace Year. The beautiful writing and interesting premise kept me reading way past my bedtime as I devoured each word on the page.

The county has a lot of rules and traditions but nothing is as bad as the Grace Year. On the sixeenth year of their lives the girls of the county must be banished to keep them from tempting the men of the town with their magic. These girls are then forced to live on an island while facing starvation, the elements, poachers who want nothing more than to kill them and worst of all, each other. Tierney has always had dreams of a girl with a small strawberry mark below her right eye a girl who would change the world. As her own Grace Year begins she isn't at all prepared for what is in store. Tierney and the girls slowly adapt the world they must live in for the next year. Some choose to embrace the Grace Year, learn to give into their magic let it run through them. And others are more practical. But as Kiersten becomes the clear leader of the group (whether by fear or loyalty), more girls decide to join her and release their magic. Tierney finds herself trying to survive alone against all odds. She then meets Ryker one of the poachers trying to kill her and everything she has been raised to know changes.

I haven't read a good YA dystopian novel in. Forever. The blurb was interesting and I'm so glad I decided to read it
Thanks Netgalley for the Arc