From the cover:
"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 gritty prose, The Grace Year is a story of survival and freedom, about fighting for what's right, no matter the cost, and finding home in the darkest of circumstances."
This book would be a great book to take camping, because it is intense.
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| Bahahahaha in tents. Get it? |
Getting started, I got major Hunger Games/Handmaid's Tale vibes. Like if books could reproduce, this would be their baby. I loved both those books, so in my opinion that's a good thing. But if you hated either/both of them...consider yourself warned.
It takes a bit to establish the world, but before I could really even wrap my head around everything, it was off to the races. There were so many gut-punch moments, and just as many times where I got my hopes up only to have them smashed again. As the mystery of what happens during the grace year unfolded, I found myself reading on the edge of my seat, struggling to close the book anytime I needed to step away from reading and deal with real life.
"In the county, everything they take away from us is a tiny death. But not here...the grace year is ours. This is the one place we can be free."
It is a mark of how terrible life in the county is that in spite of threat to life and limb, the grace year is still viewed as an opportunity for freedom. I mean sure, you literally might die, but at least there are no men to boss you around, treat you like shit, and abuse you. I think that realization was all the more powerful for me because of how often I saw my world in the pages of this book. It's dystopia...but it's real. The best (worst?) dystopias are, right?
This book was a roller coaster, equal parts inspirational and heartbreaking. You'll be thinking about it long after you read the last page.
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