This is good y’all.
I mean real good, like miss a call with your BFF, skip the season finale of Big Little Lies good!
“No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.”
With hints of the The Crucible, Lord of the Flies, and The Handmaids Tale (aka one of my favorite books of all time) The Grace Year is a masterful look into a girl's journey into womanhood.
“In the county, there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind”
Girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, 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 their chance to grab one of the girls in order to make their 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.
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Fresh, feminist, and delightfully violent The Grace Year reads like a journal entry straight out of a Handmaid’s Tale Dystopian hell hole.
"White ribbons for the young girls, red for the grace year girls, and black for the wives. Innocence. Blood. Death."
The veiling ceremony alone had me sure this book was 100% on my list of 2019 favorites for sure.
The writing feels prescient to today, and oh so grown up.
“That’s why they send us here.”
“To rid yourself of your magic,” he says.
“No,” I whisper as I drift off to sleep. “To break us.”
A quick read, its feminist and gritty its well worth picking up even if you aren’t a YA fan.
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️6/6
The Grace Year comes out in October you can order it here: https://amzn.to/2Y0a1nG
Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Kim Liggett for the advance copy!