The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett reveals the secret of the year all young women must experience when they turn sixteen. No one who hasn't yet experienced their Grace Year knows what it holds. No one who returns ever speaks of it again. The only thing anyone knows is that it is the only way for young women to diffuse the magic inside them and be "pure". Once they return, if they return, they are married off to the men who have chosen them. If they aren't chosen, they are sent to the work houses, or worse, to the outskirts to try to survive on their own. Tierney is determined she will make it back, though she prefers an assignment to the fields rather than marriage. There are plenty of obstacles to that desire, but the biggest is the year standing before her. She will have to find a way to sustain herself on the island to which she and the other girls are banished. If she can avoid the poachers, men who hope to capture and dismember the girls, and keep warm and fed she might have a chance. It is only once they begin their journey that she realizes that it will be the other girls who may be her biggest hurdle.

A little too much like a female version of The Lord of the Flies, this book means to be a feminist dystopian novel, but it just didn't seem to shake out that way. Hoping to examine the way women and girls play into the misogyny of men who take their power, it looks too much like Mean Girls on steroids (and maybe a little acid). The pacing is also very odd. It moves slowly, slowly and then suddenly it slaps the reader with a huge scene with tons of information as if the author knew where she wanted to go, but not always how to get there.

I will say that by the time I was about two-thirds of the way through the book I was enjoying it more, but it wasn't my favorite. It was dark in ways I didn't enjoy and without enough light to redeem it. The ending was abrupt without being satisfying. There is a little hope, but it is too far down the road to be comforting. 

*This Advanced Reader Copy was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for and honest review.*