Series: Standalone
Release Date: October 8, 2019
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.
Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.
• LGBTQIA+ side character
• Death
• Cannibalism
• Rape
• Sexual assault
• Slut-shaming
• Teen pregnancy
• Girl-hating
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.
Format: Hardcover
Rating: 5/5 stars
The Grace Year kept me on the edge of my seat for the entirety of the book. The novel takes place in a dystopian-like community, but I could totally see Garner County being a cult in the present day. Also, frustrating but true, the setting of The Grace Year is a more visible representation of the sexism and misogyny that is prevalent within current society.
The novel follows the journey of Tierney James as she transitions into womanhood–the age when she’s to be married. However, women outnumber the men, so only a select few of the girls get the “privilege” of being Chosen (for marriage). In Tierney’s year, there are 12 eligible boys and 33 eligible girls. Tierney is convinced that she won’t be Chosen as everyone in the community knows she refuses to conform. The lack of conformity on Tierney’s part came across as a ‘not like other girls’ trope because Tierney saw herself as the antithesis to the women in her community, including her mother and sisters.
“To be and odds with your nature, what everyone expects from you, is a life of constant struggle.”
Tierney ~ The Grace Year
However, I appreciated how the supporting characters–Tierney’s peers in the grace year–were very quick to call Tierney out for this superiority complex. When a society is so oppressive, many people have to conform to survive. And, Garner County is the definition of misogynistic. Daughters are treated like cattle, and they are also branded like them: at birth, on the bottom of one of their feet, the girl is stamped with her father’s sigil.
Conformity as Survival
I appreciated that Liggett depicted the many different ways that women conform for survival and rebel against their oppressive realities. In a society where women have no power, some girls realize that gaining power and having a voice means marrying a powerful man. Others, like Tierney, prefer hard labour to marriage because they identify power in retaining the autonomy of her body. Some girls also rebel by developing queer relationships, which emphasized a woman’s purpose is not to be a receptacle for a man’s sexual fulfillment. Women, too, can and should enjoy sex.
Tierney’s society is underpinned by a religion that sees Eve as the origin of sin, which, therefore, signifies, that all women are sinners until women can be free of their “magic.” Magic in Garner County is what women possess after they enter womanhood–after they have their period for the first time. It’s a sign to the men (and wives) of the County that these girls are seductresses that will enthrall the men if their magic is not expelled.
Enter: the grace year. The grace year is the one time that women from Garner County are utterly alone without men. They go off to live in seclusion to expel their magic and to return ‘purified’ for marriage. Tierney understands what the grace year is for, but she is stumped by why none of the returning women talk about their year away, why some girls don’t come back and why so many look shell-shocked upon their return.
Divided We Fall
From an outsider’s perspective, it was really frustrating that Tierney didn’t acknowledge (or was unable to understand) that the Garner County religion was inherently hypocritical.
The County preaches that women are evil and that their sexual magic is what entices men to stray from their wives. And, yet, it is the men in Tierney’s society who sexually harass and assault the girls and women, as if they are not in control of their actions. Even if the men were to cry “magic,”… why aren’t the women teaching the girls that if you do not consent, it is assault, no matter the “magic”? The inability–or lack of willingness–to challenge framing women as evil makes the women of the community complicit in that assault. It’s even worse because a “good life” is only attainable by marriage to a “good” man–which is exactly what the County wants the women to believe. It also means that if safety is synonymized with marriage, all unmarried women are seen as competition and enemy rather than friend and ally. Jealousy is lethal in this society.
The hatred of the returning grace years towards the girls just heading off exemplifies the complicity of women in Garner County. Women who have been abused by the patriarchy became angry at the women and girls who had not suffered the same. As a result, they then internalize their trauma and turn on the traumatized girls. Instead of helping girls survive in their new realities, they destroy any opportunity for help because they weren’t given that luxury. It also can become a twisted “preparation” for existence in their world.
Women have to fight against making life harder for those who have not suffered (yet). In the oppressive Garner Country, being a woman is already difficult. Making another’s life harder, to make it “fair” that all the women experience the same horrible experience is the method patriarchal societies like Garner County use to separate women.
“I stopped to watch the horses in the paddock being groomed by guards for the journey to the encampment, their manes and tails braided with red ribbons. Just like us. And it occurs to me, that’s how they think of us… We’re nothing more than in-season mares for breeding.”
Tierney ~ The Grace Year
What I Loved Tempered by Some Frustrations
The format of the novel was really unique since The Grace Year was broken into seasons and sections within those seasons rather than chapters. The format solidified The Grace Year story in a different world through this structure. Yet, the number of similarities (obviously, more overtly represented in the novel) to how girls and women feel today is what made the book so enjoyable but also so challenging to get over. The Grace Year was the definition of a book hangover.
My few frustrations with the novel can’t be actual critiques because they originate from knowledge which Tierney obviously didn’t have access to. One disappointment was the lack of ability to understand that Tierney’s County rules just didn’t make sense… yet she bought into it. However, Tierney has been socialized (and, really, indoctrinated) to believe that her County’s religion is the truth. So, I can’t hold it against her.
The remaining frustration was Tierney falling for the idea that magic is real. In the grace year, some (mean) girls attach themselves to the idea that they have magic: it gives them power in a society that has given them none. What was frustrating was that Tierney’s narrative would demonstrate what actually happened, and then the mean girl would say, oh, I did that with my magic. An example: one of the grace year girls was seen by Tierney collected stones on their walk to the grace year encampment. When the grace years started to cross the lake in canoes, the girl turned to Tierney and told her to apologize to her sister, and then jumped in the lake. The girl drowned because she was weighted down with the stones. However, the mean girl suggests the other girl drowned because she made her do it. And, Tierney’s mind went maybe that’s true. Like, what? It defied Tierney’s observations.
But, my frustrations were adequately addressed later on in the novel, so they didn’t detract from the star rating.
Concluding Remarks
The Grace Year was a heart-stopping book that really emphasized that in such a society, one cannot judge because one never knows the whole picture.
I want to mention that The Grace Year does have a romance because it was a complete surprise to me. I appreciated though how Liggett didn’t allow the romance to detract from Tierney’s slow journey of self-discovery. And I know this might be controversial, but I really believe the ending fits the overarching book. A warning: it’s bittersweet, but it allows for the message of The Grace Year to resonate.
Buy The Grace Year
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