Kat's Books

‘The Grace Year’ is the brutal and harrowing story about the young women of Garner County who are forced to spend their sixteenth year in a secluded encampment outside the town as they ‘embrace their magic.’ They must release their powers before they marry or go off to work in the fields or labor houses, before they return to civilization, that’s IF they return, surviving poachers who hunt them for their ‘magic’, and ultimately, surviving the time they spend with each other.

This is a feminist tale about survival, group dynamics (hysteria?), and the strength of spirit in the face of incredible adversity. The young women, teenagers, are faced with the odds stacked against them, in a patriarchal society that deems them as property, dangerous, basically as subservient pets. Many of them (all unforgettable characters) fall into the traps that are designed for them, but the main character Tierney, rails against them, questioning her predicament, and hopes for change. Over the course of the ‘Grace Year’ Tierney discovers as much about those around her as she does about herself, and draws on her own strength, of which she didn’t know she even had. It’s an amazing, albeit, often violent story about a young woman discovering herself and her own power against all odds.

This stunning novel from Kim Liggett will draw comparisons with ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, but it also made me think of both ‘Lord of The Flies’ and ‘The Crucible’, all classics, well-known for their controversy and hard-hitting subjects.
Themes of feminism, social hierarchies, group mechanics, religion, and flower and color imagery throughout the book are vivid and powerful; it’s easy to see why this is being adapted for television before it has even been published. I think it will be hard to read this and not have it resonate with the reader in a strong way; it’s dark and haunting and it honestly blew me away. I want to read it again before I see any TV adaptation because it was just THAT GOOD.

ON SALE: 9.17.19