The Grace Year: A Novel

Kim Liggett

Oct 2019 · Sold by Wednesday Books

About this ebook

The Instant New York Times Bestseller! Kim Liggett's The Grace Year is a speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power.

Survive the year.

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.

“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author

Ratings and reviews

I'm really 50/50 on YA lit, but this book was a pleasant surprise. The prose and the subject matter had a maturity that is rare in the genre. The characters were compelling and relatable, varied and believable. The story was well-told and I just kept turning the pages. I listened the the first half in the car on my way home from visiting family over the holidays (5 hour drive), and admittedly it was a little tough to get through the first half of the first section. But right as I got home it started getting good, so I immediately sat down on the couch with the e-book to finish it in one sitting. Liggett was definitely trying to set the scene in those early pages, and without that introduction the last 75% of the book would have suffered. If you're struggling to get "into it" early on, my advice would be to push through as it gets good shortly thereafter and remains interesting right up to the end. Personally, I’m hoping for a sequel.

The premise of this book was intriguing and I was very excited for it. So much that I plowed through it in less than a day. I'm more than disappointed at the execution. This book has very little pacing, everything feels incredibly rushed. Very few relationships between characters in this book hold any weight because all of their interactions happen in such short quick spans. Major events or plot twists feel unearned. Even the main character decides to just completely ignore one of these plot twists after it happens, a good indicator that it had no purpose in the first place. I finish this read feeling unsatisfied, and it's disappointing because I had such high hopes after other reviews.

The Grace Year is aptly introduced with quotes from The Handmaids Tale (Margaret Atwood) and Lord of the Flies (William Golding), two classic works that obviously acted as strong inspiration for Kim Liggett’s new novel. Although marketed as a YA title, The Grace Year would also appeal to adults who enjoy dystopic fantasy along the lines of The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) or Divergent (Veronica Roth). The action takes place in either a pre-industrial past or possibly a post-technological future-it is unclear which. Regardless, is a bleak world in which women outnumber men but are subjugated due to superstition and fear. Liggett’s narrator is Tierney, a young woman on the verge of adulthood, who is preparing for a ritual practiced in Garner County where she lives with her family. The Grace Year refers to the rite of passage endured by Garner’s young women who are sent away to a locked encampment for one year. During this time, they are left to fend for themselves as they rid themselves of emerging magical abilities believed to be brought on by adolescence. Their potential power is highly feared, and the danger inherent in the girls’ emerging sexuality is used as justification for their exile. Many do not return, and those that do often come back with deep scars-both physical and emotional. No one knows what happens during their time away, since speaking about the Grace Year is forbidden and punishable by death. Before they are cast out, the girls are selected by marriageable men and will be consigned to their houses when/if they return. Male offspring are the priority, and the women who do not produce them are regularly discarded, cast out and replaced by others. Those who are not married are destined to be servants or are sent beyond the gates of the County to be hunted by predatory men. Of course, Tierney is very different from the other girls in her Grace Year- she has survival skills she learned from her physician father, keen intelligence and an iron will to resist the path that tradition has paved for her. When her trial begins, she seems uniquely advantaged, but what she could not have prepared for is the cruelty of her fellow exiles and a mob mentality that can suffocate even the brightest of independent spirits. The Grace Year is a good example of nice pacing and character development that can often be absent in the ubiquitous landscape of YA dystopic thriller offerings. Tierney’s adventure and challenges are exciting to follow, and the book’s setting as pitted against its strong feminist viewpoint makes this story at once infuriating and satisfying. It is unfortunate that the author chooses to position her heroine in ways that are ultimately subservient to the males that assert dominance in her world. If Ligett is paving the way for a sequel, hopefully Tierney’s story will continue in a way that feels more vindicating for those readers who demand a heroine worthy of admiration and respect. Thanks to the author, St. Martin’s Books (Wednesday Press) and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

About the author

Kim Liggett is the New York Times and International bestselling author of The Grace Year, a Target, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million Book Club Pick, along with Amazon Editor's Young Adult Book of the Year for 2019, and winner of the 2020 Nous a Libre Prize for Young Adult Literature. Published in over twenty languages and counting, The Grace Year continues to captivate readers of all ages from around the globe. Also an acclaimed horror writer, she is the author of The Last Harvest, winner of the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Young Adult Literature, The Unfortunates, a YALSA quick pick for reluctant readers, and the Blood and Salt Duology. Originally from the rural midwest and a proud New Yorker for over twenty years, Liggett now resides in Los Angeles in a house covered with red flowers, where she happily tends to her hummingbird army.