The Grace Year by Kim Liggett Review

The Grace Year is a YA dystopian novel where when girls turn 16, they enter their Grace Year. In their culture, it's believed that during their Grace Year, the girls have special magic that they must then go out and get rid of in the woods. This is done by sending all of the girls out to a small settlement in the woods and hoping that they'll know how to take care of themselves and that they won't be captured by poachers that believe Grace Year girls' bodies have magical qualities. Talking about the Grace Year is forbidden, so each year all of the girls have to independently do their best to survive.

Going into this book, I assumed it would have sci-fi elements, however this is not a sci-fi novel. I'm not really sure why I assumed that would be the case when the description really doesn't make it seem that way at all, but if you're looking for a sci-fi leaning dystopian novel, just be aware that isn't what The Grace Year is. False expectations aside, I really enjoyed this novel and, while I had a few problems with it, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking for a modern, but slightly more traditional, dystopian YA novel.

What I enjoyed about this book:

- The themes! A large part of dystopian fiction are the underlying themes and The Grace Year handles it's political and social commentary very well. Each theme expands as the book goes on and it eventually becomes clear everything is interrelated. I don't want to talk much about the specifics because that would get into spoilers, but I felt it was very well done.

- The writing and plot! While I did have some problems with the pacing (as listed below), this book absolutely shines in moments of intrigue where you aren't quite sure what's going to happen next. I think this is due to this book being a dystopian novel, but also highlighting survival in the wilderness. There are some really great sequences, especially towards the end, where the thriller elements are absolutely amazing. I think this happens both because of the plot itself and because of Liggett's writing style.

- The worldbuilding! This is somewhat similar to themes, but the overall worldbuilding in this book is fascinated and, while it seems very simple at first, as the story progresses everything gets just ab it more complicated. I would say even just learning more about the world was why I enjoyed this book so much.

- The characters! While there are a few characters that fall into stereotypical categories of "good" or "evil", many have more nuanced and morally grey paths that I thought were really interesting.

Aspects of this book that weren't for me:

- The pacing. This book is divided into a few different sections, with each one covering a different period of events during The Grace Year. This is fine, but my only problem with it was that it often felt like time wasn't really progressing in the way that it should've been. For example, in some sections, only a few events would happen and then there'd be a large time jump to another season. It just felt a little strange to me.

- The romance. I don't want to expand on this too much, but there's a romance aspect partway through the book that didn't make a lot of sense to me and felt very underdeveloped. I have somewhat mixed feelings on it overall because it did fit thematically, but it just wasn't developed enough for me to really feel attached to it at any point.

Ultimately, I gave this book a four star rating because there's a lot to love about it and it really is a wonderful dystopian novel that reminds me a lot of when I read dystopian fiction published before the early 2000s. It's very grounded and, in general, I really appreciated the overall tone and themes. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone looking for a solid dystopian YA read.

TW: Severe injury and maiming, murder, sexism (major theme, includes violence against women), pedophilia (there are no direct scenes, but it is mentioned), kidnapping, and gun violence. To be clear, some of the violence is fairly graphic, likely on par with violence in The Hunger Games.