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A review by jenacidebybibliophile
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
5.0
“One after another the fathers file in, the pretty maids are veiled, and with each one down, I feel the chains begin to loosen around my chest. I’m one step closer to building a life on my own terms.
But when my father enters the chapel, the veil held out in front of him like a stillborn calf, it feels as if I’m being gutted with the dull end of an axe.”
“With trembling fingers, he lowers the veil over my raging eyes.“
All Tierney James has to do is survive her Grace Year – twelve months of banishment where the girls who have reached their sixteenth year are to release their magic in order to protect the men of Garner County. If they are successful, they may renter society as respectable women. But Tierney wants something different than what the County can offer her. She spent her childhood outdoors, exploring and learning how to care for herself. She has worked for years to show no interest in the boys, to ensure that none of them view her as a viable option for a wife. She wishes to work in the fields and to be free. Free of the shackles of marriage and becoming a man’s property and breeding stock.
“Legs spread, arms flat, eyes to God”
And for a moment, she thinks she will have it.
But the day before her Grace Year begins, Tierney is given a veil by a boy – a promise of marriage upon her return, if she makes it out alive. She is left feeling devastated right as she’s being thrust into the unknown. Because nobody will speak of the Grace Year and what the girls must endure in those long months of isolation. Nobody talks about the girls that come back broken – limbs missing, minds scrambled. Or the depravity behind their eyes when they make their way back through the gates. With her future now shackled in irons, Tierney must follow the other girls as they release their magic and begin their year of penance.
“Your eyes are wide open, but you see nothing.”
I don’t even know where to start with this book.
It left me speechless.
As someone who has had a horrible time transitioning from YA to Adult/New Adult fiction, I am so glad there are books like this in the world. This book glides right between the lines of both categories and launches you into a fever dream of female desperation. The atmosphere is thick and putrid with a mystery of secrets that slip through your fingers like smoke. The girls are ferocious, they are spirited and they are almighty.
It’s impossible to not be swept into the waves of this siren song of a tale.
It drags you down to its depths, breaks your spirit and heart, and releases you back to the surface just as your about to lose consciousness.
It’s soulful, eerie, beautiful, enraged and tender.
“And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts—the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of?“
Think of it as a Lord of the Flies meets The Handmaids Tale meets Midsommar. Every year a group of girls are forced to leave and live in isolation in order to rid themselves of their trickery. They say the girls have magic that seduces the men and leads them to danger. They say the girls can curse them and send them to an early grave. So they’re sent to an encampment where they must live with only one another, cut off from the rest of the world.
But this isn’t summer camp – it’s survival.
“As the gate closes on the guards’ troubled faces, it’s clear they truly believe we’re loathsome creatures that need to be hidden away for safekeeping, for our own good, to exorcise the demons lurking inside of us, but even in this cursed place, anger, fear, and resentment boiling inside of me, I still don’t feel magical. I still don’t feel powerful.
I feel forsaken.”
The girls quickly begin to change, becoming more unhinged and lawless as the days go on – because what happens in the Grace Year, stays in the Grace Year. They turn on each other and choose sides to deem who is right and who is wrong, who is worthy and who is not. They sacrifice one another because they all assume that most of them will die anyways, so they speed the process along with a kick and a shove. But some of the girls don’t wish to go back to the county, especially the girls that didn’t receive a veil.
“As her black wool cloak envelops her body, she quickly sinks to the depths.
And I realize the only rebellion she had in mind was her own.“
One of the most intense aspects of this book is the fear and loathing around the Grace Year girls, from the men AND women. The women of previous years wear their hatred for the girls on their battered and imperfect bodies. The unspoken understanding of “I had to do it, so you have to do it” is an agreement all the women understand and share, and something that bonds them but also breaks them all apart. But the cruelty and lack of compassion the girls have towards each other is heartbreaking…even if it does serve a purpose. They will do anything to ensure they survive, and their morals dissipate all too quickly.
“Without it, I wonder how we’ll communicate. I want to believe it’s with words, but looking at the punishment tree, I can see it’s with violence.”
“But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. They can call it magic. I can call it madness.”
“But one thing is certain. There is no grace here.”
Tierney is the character the reader gets to know the most, and though we have countless other girls that share the spotlight, the author ensures everyone is shrouded in mystery until the bitter end. Usually I wouldn’t be too keen on characters I only know at surface level, but Kim Liggett knows how to package darkness into fragile beauty. The thrill of this story is that it feels like a fever dream the ENTIRE time you read, and I actually loved how unsure I felt about everyone. There is always a smattering of mistrust and betrayal lurking in the depths from every character, even Tierney. The morose themes kept me reading, but what keeps me with a book-hangover are the girls that reek of tragedy.
“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.”
These girls are sorrow incarnate.
But what can happen to them is devastating.
“I am nothing. I am no one. Only skin and bones.“
If a girl dies during her Grace Year and her body is not recovered, then her younger sisters will be banished from the county and sent to the outskirts. No matter their age. Not only does it keep many of the girls from running or suicide, but it keeps them in line and doing as their told.
If a girl is outside of the encampment, by her own means of wandering or a gentle shove from another girl, the risk of getting butchered alive by poachers is 99.9%.
Poachers, you ask?
Allow me to explain.
There are men, called poachers, who hunt the Grace Year girls and butcher them while they are alive. They bottle bits of the girls and send them back to the county, where they are purchased for a number of reasons – like keeping the other women young. But worse yet, the girls consider this an honorable death.
“With tears streaming down my face, I whisper,
‘Forgive me.’
I think this book is designed to be something you fall into, like a black pit. So for that reason, I don’t want to touch on a lot of what happens in the second half of the book. Though I didn’t anticipate where the story started to go, I was SHOCKED towards the end and am still surprised with how the author decided to finish the book. I am neither overjoyed nor upset, and honestly, that’s exactly where I like to be. I think I have had my fill of perfectly packaged, cookie-cutter romances where everything always turns out how it should.
This book did not turn out how I wanted it to.
Which is exactly why I love it.
It’s different.
And with that, I will leave you. But just know, this book will forever have my full support and endorsement. Please read it for the girls and the feelings that we’ve all unfortunately felt. Enjoy it for the surprises, and devour it for the depravity.
“Fear not, for my love is everlasting,”
Stay wild.
But when my father enters the chapel, the veil held out in front of him like a stillborn calf, it feels as if I’m being gutted with the dull end of an axe.”
“With trembling fingers, he lowers the veil over my raging eyes.“
All Tierney James has to do is survive her Grace Year – twelve months of banishment where the girls who have reached their sixteenth year are to release their magic in order to protect the men of Garner County. If they are successful, they may renter society as respectable women. But Tierney wants something different than what the County can offer her. She spent her childhood outdoors, exploring and learning how to care for herself. She has worked for years to show no interest in the boys, to ensure that none of them view her as a viable option for a wife. She wishes to work in the fields and to be free. Free of the shackles of marriage and becoming a man’s property and breeding stock.
“Legs spread, arms flat, eyes to God”
And for a moment, she thinks she will have it.
But the day before her Grace Year begins, Tierney is given a veil by a boy – a promise of marriage upon her return, if she makes it out alive. She is left feeling devastated right as she’s being thrust into the unknown. Because nobody will speak of the Grace Year and what the girls must endure in those long months of isolation. Nobody talks about the girls that come back broken – limbs missing, minds scrambled. Or the depravity behind their eyes when they make their way back through the gates. With her future now shackled in irons, Tierney must follow the other girls as they release their magic and begin their year of penance.
“Your eyes are wide open, but you see nothing.”
I don’t even know where to start with this book.
It left me speechless.
As someone who has had a horrible time transitioning from YA to Adult/New Adult fiction, I am so glad there are books like this in the world. This book glides right between the lines of both categories and launches you into a fever dream of female desperation. The atmosphere is thick and putrid with a mystery of secrets that slip through your fingers like smoke. The girls are ferocious, they are spirited and they are almighty.
It’s impossible to not be swept into the waves of this siren song of a tale.
It drags you down to its depths, breaks your spirit and heart, and releases you back to the surface just as your about to lose consciousness.
It’s soulful, eerie, beautiful, enraged and tender.
“And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts—the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of?“
Think of it as a Lord of the Flies meets The Handmaids Tale meets Midsommar. Every year a group of girls are forced to leave and live in isolation in order to rid themselves of their trickery. They say the girls have magic that seduces the men and leads them to danger. They say the girls can curse them and send them to an early grave. So they’re sent to an encampment where they must live with only one another, cut off from the rest of the world.
But this isn’t summer camp – it’s survival.
“As the gate closes on the guards’ troubled faces, it’s clear they truly believe we’re loathsome creatures that need to be hidden away for safekeeping, for our own good, to exorcise the demons lurking inside of us, but even in this cursed place, anger, fear, and resentment boiling inside of me, I still don’t feel magical. I still don’t feel powerful.
I feel forsaken.”
The girls quickly begin to change, becoming more unhinged and lawless as the days go on – because what happens in the Grace Year, stays in the Grace Year. They turn on each other and choose sides to deem who is right and who is wrong, who is worthy and who is not. They sacrifice one another because they all assume that most of them will die anyways, so they speed the process along with a kick and a shove. But some of the girls don’t wish to go back to the county, especially the girls that didn’t receive a veil.
“As her black wool cloak envelops her body, she quickly sinks to the depths.
And I realize the only rebellion she had in mind was her own.“
One of the most intense aspects of this book is the fear and loathing around the Grace Year girls, from the men AND women. The women of previous years wear their hatred for the girls on their battered and imperfect bodies. The unspoken understanding of “I had to do it, so you have to do it” is an agreement all the women understand and share, and something that bonds them but also breaks them all apart. But the cruelty and lack of compassion the girls have towards each other is heartbreaking…even if it does serve a purpose. They will do anything to ensure they survive, and their morals dissipate all too quickly.
“Without it, I wonder how we’ll communicate. I want to believe it’s with words, but looking at the punishment tree, I can see it’s with violence.”
“But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. They can call it magic. I can call it madness.”
“But one thing is certain. There is no grace here.”
Tierney is the character the reader gets to know the most, and though we have countless other girls that share the spotlight, the author ensures everyone is shrouded in mystery until the bitter end. Usually I wouldn’t be too keen on characters I only know at surface level, but Kim Liggett knows how to package darkness into fragile beauty. The thrill of this story is that it feels like a fever dream the ENTIRE time you read, and I actually loved how unsure I felt about everyone. There is always a smattering of mistrust and betrayal lurking in the depths from every character, even Tierney. The morose themes kept me reading, but what keeps me with a book-hangover are the girls that reek of tragedy.
“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.”
These girls are sorrow incarnate.
But what can happen to them is devastating.
“I am nothing. I am no one. Only skin and bones.“
If a girl dies during her Grace Year and her body is not recovered, then her younger sisters will be banished from the county and sent to the outskirts. No matter their age. Not only does it keep many of the girls from running or suicide, but it keeps them in line and doing as their told.
If a girl is outside of the encampment, by her own means of wandering or a gentle shove from another girl, the risk of getting butchered alive by poachers is 99.9%.
Poachers, you ask?
Allow me to explain.
There are men, called poachers, who hunt the Grace Year girls and butcher them while they are alive. They bottle bits of the girls and send them back to the county, where they are purchased for a number of reasons – like keeping the other women young. But worse yet, the girls consider this an honorable death.
“With tears streaming down my face, I whisper,
‘Forgive me.’
I think this book is designed to be something you fall into, like a black pit. So for that reason, I don’t want to touch on a lot of what happens in the second half of the book. Though I didn’t anticipate where the story started to go, I was SHOCKED towards the end and am still surprised with how the author decided to finish the book. I am neither overjoyed nor upset, and honestly, that’s exactly where I like to be. I think I have had my fill of perfectly packaged, cookie-cutter romances where everything always turns out how it should.
This book did not turn out how I wanted it to.
Which is exactly why I love it.
It’s different.
And with that, I will leave you. But just know, this book will forever have my full support and endorsement. Please read it for the girls and the feelings that we’ve all unfortunately felt. Enjoy it for the surprises, and devour it for the depravity.
“Fear not, for my love is everlasting,”
Stay wild.