Tierney James lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at sixteen to the northern forest to brave the wilderness – and each other – for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry – if they’re lucky. It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them – if they survive it…

I found The Grace Year to be a very interesting and compelling YA dystopian story. It has elements of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Lord of the Flies so you can kind of guess what some of the plot elements or vibes will be, but I think The Grace Year puts its own take on these elements and has a really strong but flawed lead in Tierney.

Something I really liked about The Grace Year was the young women’s magic – or should that be “magic”? It leaves you wondering for a while whether or not the magic is truly supernatural magic, or if it’s a religious doctrine, or its just what this society calls female puberty. Arguments for the latter can be made early on with the way that men in the village look at the girls as they come of age, and then there’s also what could be described as jealousy from the women who have already gone through the grace year and are now perhaps more older and less desirable than they’d like to be. (more…)