Book Review: The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year
by Kim Liggett (YA Liggett)

The Grace Year is a teen novel that combines small-community dystopia with survivalist genres. It’s set in a County where families with privilege live, while everyone outside of the County are dangerously desperate poor people. Or at least that’s what the people inside the County are told. Another thing they’re told is that young women have dangerous magic that–among other things–forces good husbands to have affairs with them. To deal with this problem, sixteen year old girls are sent away for a year to live with each other in isolation so they can either get their magic under control or die during their “grace year.” The girls who survive are ready to become compliant wives.

It should come as no surprise that our hero, Tierney, has doubts about this setup. On the other hand, she is starting to have vivid dreams about what readers will recognize as a witches’ coven in the forest. As her year of girls is led away on their journey, she sees that it’s true that outsider men are following, eager to capture and butcher them if they stray from their eunuch guardsmen. Fair warning: this is a gory book.

When they arrive at the place they’ll be spending the next year, things quickly take a turn into Lord of the Flies territory. Tierney struggles to survive the wilderness isolation, other girls, and outsider men waiting beyond with their knives. Meanwhile, she unravels the mysteries around the grace year.

Recommended most strongly for readers who will enjoy the mystery elements or the feeling of seemingly invincible misogynistic oppression. It may work for readers interested in survival stories, but for all the deaths in this book there should be MORE deaths if the survival elements were treated with more realism. My other complaint is that the events of the grace year part of this book only seem to take 3-4 months combined. Maybe it was edited down to accommodate the vital parts of the story that take place before and after.

As far as I noticed, all characters are presumed white. Same sex attraction is included in a small, but extremely positive way. Trans/non-binary identities are not mentioned.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Wilder Girls by Rory Power, Girls With Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young, We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia, These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling, or the Selection by Kiera Cass]

[ publisher’s official The Grace Year web page ] | [ official Kim Liggett web site ]

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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