The Grace Year Book Review

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Set in a dystopian future of our own world, Garner County is full of women led to believe they have intoxicating power over men. Because of this, each of them must be banished to the wilderness when they are 16 for their grace year so they can be purified and rid of their magic – that is, the ones who make it back alive. Tierney James’ grace year is upon her and she not only must survive the savagery of the poachers looking to cut up her body, but the brutality of the other girls with her and their insatiable yearn to become ‘good’ women.

The Grace Year is a dystopia with all the intentions of The Handmaid’s Tale but unfortunately not the same execution. Throughout, the book is desperate to be this empowering, feminist piece with a social commentary to parallel the real world. However, for me, it was way too on the nose and while I understand the intention, the actions of the characters contradict it too much for my liking.

This is a YA dystopia, so inevitably, there’s a romance storyline and I really think the book could have done without it. Tierney need to be a headstrong protagonist in order to become the feminist icon the book so desperately needs, but by being lured away by love, it just undermines what her character had the potential to become.

By far, the most interesting part of the book was the girls and the grace year themselves. I have to appalled the author’s tenacity to write girls whose actions are so irredeemable and yet still make the reader understand they are the victims of they patriarchal narrative.

It is a shame this fell flat for me because it had the potential to do great things. I think a sequel (or perhaps even a prequel?) could help us understand a lot of the events in this book but without it I am underwhelmed. The ending too just seems to me to be a complete eradication of the narrative arc up until that point so I have to question why the author would write such a bizarre ending given Tierney’s intentions throughout the book.