The Grace Year

In the patriarchal society of Garner County, there’s “nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind.” In their sixteenth year, girls are banished to spend a year in the wilderness — on what’s called “the grace year” — to rid themselves of their sinful magic, returning pure and ready for marriage. Speaking of what happens during the grace year is forbidden, but every girl knows that the year will change them. In a brutal fight for survival, they must go up against nature, ghosts, and poachers — but worst of all, each other.

Liggett has crafted a stunning, harrowing, and utterly absorbing narrative about the relationship between young women, and the men who think they can control them. It’s about survival, about conformity, about resistance. Liggett builds on existing YA dystopian tropes, and expertly uses them to her advantage. The Grace Year is dark and exasperating like every feminist dystopian should be, all the while presenting a brilliant, imaginative new premise.

Hailed as a must-read for fans of The Hunger Games and The Power, this feminist dystopian reignited my obsession with YA fiction.