Author: Kim Liggett
Genre: Y/A Thriller
Publisher: Wednesday Books/MacMillan
Release Date: Oct. 8, 2019
Purchase Link: Amazon
My Rating: All the Stars in Heaven!
*Many, many thanks to Wednesday Books for an arc of this book!
A speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power. Optioned by Universal and Elizabeth Banks to be a major motion picture!
“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner. Liggett’s deeply suspenseful book brilliantly explores the high cost of a misogynistic world that denies women power and does it with a heart-in-your-throat, action-driven story that’s equal parts horror-laden fairy tale, survival story, romance, and resistance manifesto. I couldn’t stop reading.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author
Synopsis:
No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.
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.
Review:
Wow! I'm speechless! It's not often a book leaves me that way, but after reading the final page (several times over!) of The Grace Year, I sat in a trance-like state with tears trickling down my cheeks, trying to wrap my head around this story and message. Hoping to sleep on it, I retired for the night only to toss and turn with scenes and characters from the story haunting my dreams. I arose this morning restless - still trying to find a voice for the raw emotion this book evoked in me, but tell me . . . how do you review a book that gutted you? How do I tell fellow readers that while this book may flay you wide open as it did me, read it anyway because a spark of hope will linger, catch flame, and spread like wildfire afterwards? Well, this is me telling you: Read this book! It delivers a powerful message that everyone, most especially girls/women, needs to heed. Together we rise, divided we fall...
I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing the plot line of The Grace Year. You'll get the drift from the blurb and other reviews. It's a highly atmospheric, visual read that crawled under my skin and transported me to the isolated camp alongside the grace girls. I felt their anguish, fear, despair, horror, and yes - even the impending madness that descended upon them, seeping into their minds, urging them to give into their primal instincts. In a desperate battle for survival, they hover within the stockade, fearing the horrors that threaten them from beyond - before turning their sights on each other.
Liggett's brilliant rendering of this story creates tension, suspense, and apprehension page by page, scene after scene, and it took root inside me, squeezing my heart and making it difficult to breathe. I had to step away from it briefly about halfway through, catch my breath, let my heart rate return to normal. And then, I picked it back up and burned through the rest of the story until, as I mentioned at the start of this review, I sat speechless.
Liggett's brilliant rendering of this story creates tension, suspense, and apprehension page by page, scene after scene, and it took root inside me, squeezing my heart and making it difficult to breathe. I had to step away from it briefly about halfway through, catch my breath, let my heart rate return to normal. And then, I picked it back up and burned through the rest of the story until, as I mentioned at the start of this review, I sat speechless.
The Grace Year is raw, graphic, violent, at times horrifying, and yet it's a highly entertaining, compulsive, page-turning story of survival and unity and eternal hope. It's a story that explores the many complex relationships between girls and women of all ages. It's a fantastic, beautifully crafted story that pushed, shoved, and clawed its way to the top of my Favorites List. Read this book!
My Rating: All the Stars in Heaven!
Cross My Heart . . . xxx
♥Sandra♥
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