The Grace Year by Kin Ligget

The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett, is one of this year's big titles. Tapping into the 'dangerous women' craze started by The Handmaid's Tale, this one features a town where the girls are sent into the wild for a year to expel the magic that drives men wild. If they survive, they can come home to be married or assigned a job in the fields and dairies. The novel follows one particular group of girls as they go on their Grace Year and struggle to survive.



The idea of this novel was great, and the writing is good. But I found parts of the concept to stretch my belief. There are thirty three girls turning sixteen, and ten boys. That's a very odd discrepancy. However, maybe it explains why the men don't care if girls die on the Grace Year - not just by attrition, either; they are actively hunted while they're gone - there's plenty of others to take their place. It also doesn't seem to occur to anyone that if the Magic appears when a girl turns sixteen, and takes a year to drain away, then they should be sending girls continuously, not in one big block once a year. Most of the girls must have some magic, at one end of the Year or the other; they can't all turn sixteen at the same time.

The other thing that confuses me is the island they're sent to. There's forest for the poachers to hide in, and a compound for the girls with a fence that the poachers don't cross, because - manners, I suppose? They talk about the poachers being afraid of a curse, but after hunting and torturing years of girls, they must know there's no real magic. But the fence also goes around a huge swathe of wood and a cliff? I read this in e-book form, so maybe the physical book will have a map that will make things easier. I just couldn't picture it.

And, of course, there's a love story. Let's just not go there.

But I don't want this to be all negative! The book is well written - I love the language of it - and it has some very good things to say about how fear can control people even better than actual punishment, and how working together can make impossible things happen. They sound trite when I say them, but in the novel they're beautifully presented. That's why Kim is an author, and I just write reviews.

This is one to read. Just watch out for slightly odd bits.

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

Girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, 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 their chance to grab one of the girls in order to make their 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.

• The Grace Year publishes in October 2019.