'The Grace Year' by Kim Ligget
**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOLIERS**
(no plot twists are revealed, and i think you can read my review before reading and still enjoy all of the twists in the book, big and small, but a few minor things are mentioned vaguely.)
I found a free 36 page preview, with google books, so its reliable and won't give your device a virus, link here: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Grace_Year/OjHNDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
Genre: thriller, dystopian fiction
Age rating: YA, 14+
personally, i'm 14, and i feel like this age rating is fair, however, i still recommend looking up content/ trigger warnings before reading if you are a younger reader !!
Plot summary: In garner county, it is believed that all young women are born with a dark power. to counteract this, all 16 year old girls begin their grace year; they are banished to the northern forest for a year to burn through all of their magic, returning purified and ready to marry- if they survive. no one exactly knows what happens in the grace year, as it's strongly forbidden to speak of the grace year.
The book is told from the point of view of tierney james, our quick-thinking and strong-willed protagonist, going into her grace year, where she unveils the truth about her powers, the people profiting off of the grace year, the mystery girl in her dreams, and the ominous figure shadowing her.
favourite quotes:
1. "That strange heat moving to my cheeks. I always thought it was magic moving through me, but now I know it to be rage."
2. "Heaven is a boy in a treehouse, with cold hands and a warm heart.“
3. "When our choices are taken from us, the fire builds within. Sometimes I feel like we might burn down the world to cindery bits, with out love, our rage, and everything in between"
4. "The wounds the women held so close that they had to clamp their mouths shut for fear of it slipping out. I saw the hurt and the anger seeping from their pores, making them lash out of the women around them. Jealous of their daughters. Jealous of the wind that could move over the cliffs without a care in the world... A heart with walls so tall that it slowly suffocates, choking on its own secrets. But here, in this room, my mother and my sisters gathered around me, I understand there's so much more to us... a world hidden in the tiny gestures that I could never see before. They were there all along.”
5. "It feels like freedom, but we know it's a lie. This is how they break us. They take everything away, our very dignity, and anything we get in return feels like a gift.”
Tierney James- a character study:
“I always thought of myself as such a solitary creature—oh, how I longed to be alone—but I didn’t realize until I got out here how much of that is false. Something I told myself to feel strong … better than the rest. I spent most of my life watching people, judging them, sorting them into some category or another, because it kept the focus off myself.”
Tierney James is not a "solitary creature", Tierney James is not antisocial, Tierney James did not long for isolation. Tierney James, and all of the women in the garner county, never experienced female friendship, and if they did it was in fragments; passing conversation at the market, and subtle whispers at church. The only friendship she had before her grace year was with Michael Welk, her childhood best friend, and this was a friendship kept in secrecy, only meeting in the depth of the forest, or on summer evenings without anyone knowing.
Tierney James is an extremely determined character, from the second she enters the encampment she strives to set up rain barrels and food rations, and she follows through with those plans. She can appear standoffish, but she is a good willing person. she doesn't easily trust people, which can be chalked up to her growing up fairly lonely, however she never shames the other girls for not knowing how to cut wood or start a fire, instead her first reaction is to offer assistance.
The author, Kim Ligget, said this about Tierney in an interview with joy from brazos bookstore, "The thing I love most is her resilience. She keeps getting back up. She keeps fighting. There’s a line in the book, “It’s the choices you make when no one is watching that make you who you are.” It becomes sort of a mantra for her. I find so much inspiration from that. It’s the little choices we make, day by day, moment by moment, that add up to be something meaningful. No matter how lost or hopeless we feel, that is the one thing we can control."
In the grace year, Tierney gets her first taste of female companionship with Gertie, the underdog of the group. Whilst the grace year was traumatic, isolating, and dangerous for all of the girls, it was also the only time that they could form bonds with other women. it was really interesting to see the evolution of Gertie and Tierney's friendship grow in such unusual circumstances, and it was quite speaking about both of their characters.
Whilst Tierney wasn't immune to the effects of the expectations placed on her as a woman in garner county, she still managed to maintain a mostly open mind and understanding, which i think is more demonstration of her pervasive good will. even though the other girls chose to not associate with Gertie for her accusations of "depravity", and even though Tierney is still curious about this, she doesn't let herself be shamed into abandoning Gertie. She takes sympathy on her, and defends her whenever she can.
feminist themes in the grace year
“In the county, there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind. That’s what happened to Eve, you know, why we were cast out from heaven. We’re dangerous creatures. Full of devil charms. If given the opportunity, we will use our magic to lure men to sin, to evil, to destruction.” My eyes are getting heavy, too heavy to roll in a dramatic fashion. “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.”
The grace year is a feminist novel. It is set in a dystopian society with very obvious gender inequality, this is done to put a magnifying glass to gender based issues in our society, and demonstrate the effect it has on women, hence our story is told from a female protagonists POV. as well as this, the core belief grounding the logic of the grace year, the idea that womens "magic" is something that needs to be controlled, or burnt out, is clearly rooted in sexism.
The grace year is an interesting and honest look at the change from womanhood to girlhood. during the first chapter, when tierney first wears her red ribbon, symbolising that she is officially a grace year girl, she sees the shift in the way that men treat her and look at her; "I feel ashamed and I don't even know why. I'm the same girl I was yesterday, but now that I'm freshly scrubbed and squeezed into this ridiculous dress, marked by a red ribbon, I've become entirely visible to the men and women of Garner County, like some exotic animal on display. Their eyes, their whispers feel like the sharp edge of a blade grazing my skin."
Ligget does a great job portraying the difficulty of navigating beauty, and sexuality as a young woman. The grace year also discusses beauty standards, and the idea that youthful= desirable. the belief that beauty has a time limit is an inherently misogynistic view and also a double standard, as aging for women is seen as something unappealing, whereas it is something natural men. One way this can be seen in todays society is in the cosmetic industry, with many anti ageing products marketed to women, further pressuring for women to say looking youthful, instead of embracing growing older. In the grace year, we see older women go to extremes to stay looking young, many going as far as to clean their faces with the blood of grace year girls. this is a very powerful metaphor, as it shows how women literally buy into products created by men to adhere to their gaze.
Ligget, said this in an interview with joy from brazos bookstore, "I think growing up is one very long Grace Year. It’s brutal for girls. We place an impossible set of standards on them, project all of our fear and desire on them, and when they falter, they’re entirely to blame. And then when you get to be my age, some women feel invisible - used up - they’re discarded, traded in for a younger model. There isn’t anything in this story that I haven’t felt or seen or experienced on some level. Yes, it’s a heightened reality, but the scars remain the same."
My thoughts
The grace year is definitely in my top 5 favourite books of all time. I read it in less than a week (which is a record for me because i'm a really slow reader), and i think this was partially due to the brilliant pacing. The book takes place just over a year, which is quite a lengthy time span, and lots of things are packed into it, but still nothing, in my opinion, was overly rushed. even with events that took over shorter time spans (ie. the anders situation) I felt still took up a proportionate amount of time due to the suspense leading up to them. one thing I do wish got more attention was the identity of the usurper, however i can only hope that that gets explored further in the sequel.
Thematically, the book is really strong- I felt like all of the overall themes interconnected well, which made the storytelling more cohesive, and helped wrap up the book even if it does end on a bit of a cliff-hanger with Tierney's fate. One unique aspect of this book I enjoyed was the inclusion of the language of flowers. Not only was this something I don't often see in books nowadays, it also worked thematically to have something traditionally feminine be so important in this book centred around womanhood.
One thing I personally didn't like was the foreshadowing with the girl in tierney's dreams- I feel like it didn't actually do much overall for the storyline, and honestly found most of Tierney's dreams to be a bit boring to read through. I also found the twist revealing the identity of the girl to be quite disappointing and predictable. I understand that the author was trying to say that Tierney saw the girl in her dreams to be a manifestation of the life Tierney wants away from garner county, and it also served as a foreshadowing tool at times, however I think that the execution of the idea wasn't quiet right at times.
The grace year was very healing to read as YA dystopian with a female main character, as it avoided many misogynistic tropes in the genre. a lot of YA dystopian pushes forward an "I'm not like other girls" trope onto female main characters, which is really annoying to read because it normally reeks of internalized misogyny. The grace year successfully embraces femininity and the power of female solidarity whilst also criticising the patriarchy. It even addresses Tierney's own internalized misogyny, and how she grew up as "tomboy", which plays into her character development through the book as she finally experiences female friendship.
I personally hate, hate, hate love triangles, however I think the one done in the grace year was done correctly (please hear me out here). Both love interests are likeable for different reasons, they are very different characters, their relationship with Tierney is different, and the love triangle itself is very subtle. The conflict of the book isn't if Tierney picks boy 1 or boy 2, but how Tierney's relationship grows with both love interests in different ways. in an interview with joy from brazos bookstore, ligget said this about the romance aspect of the grace year, "There was always a romance. Some people believe that romance shouldn’t exist in feminist literature. That it somehow makes a story less feminist. In my opinion, that’s a very limited viewpoint, and one that I don’t adhere to. There are a million ways to be a feminist. There are a million ways to fight. If you’re looking for an ‘all men are evil’ story, this isn’t your book. This is simply a story about a girl trying to find her way in a society that wants to break her. She is strong, she is brave, she is flawed, but above all, she is a survivor. And sometimes surviving is the bravest thing you can do."
Overall rating: 5/5
-by ayla
a quick update: so... it's been 3 months since my last post. around late january i just had no idea or real inspiration to write (haha i love burnout) but easter break has finally come, and i am ready to start writing again, with a few changes. i think im going to aim for 3 to 4 longer posts per month, instead of weekly posts. this way i can actually develop and fully enjoy ideas, and also not have to find a new subject to write once a week- which is unrealistic with school. the content in my posts isn't going to change, just the length of posts, so that hopefully i can get to a stable uploading schedule. thank you al for reading <33
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