The Grace Year | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Review

---

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Grace Year

Written by Kim Liggett

Published October 2019 by Wednesday Books

#YoungAdult, #ScienceFiction, #Feminist, #Thriller, #SocietalCriticism

---

Not going to lie, I read this book three months ago as of writing this post, please be kind as I am speaking more ephemerally than normal.

Last year we read Wilder Girls by Rory Power for book club and I, generally, felt let down by it. If you felt the same way then you may find this book a better option. This one is lacking in body horror compared to Wilder Girls but it makes up for it with better pacing, a consistent theme, and intricate interpersonal relationships between girls.

If you are a teacher/librarian/administrator I feel like this could be a good pick for a summer reading book. It has great themes but is comprehensible so a facilitated discussion is not necessary (doesn't hurt to have some but not necessary).

I have, as of late, been thinking about how women interact with each other in books; especially books aimed at young people. I realized that I have harbored for a long time a weird subconscious grudge against literally every woman I interact with. This one is prettier, more popular, funnier. smarter, more successful, whatever and I suck, but at the same time I hold pride in choices I make that belittle those very same women. I subconsciously internalized the idea that the fact that I'm too lazy to put makeup on every day and gravitate more towards jeans and t-shirts than skirts and blouses meant that I was better than the rest of the female population, because being feminine is bad. I picked this up from years of identifying with the "not like other girls" in the media I consumed. For years I felt this way. It wasn't until college when I would start reading more books and having tougher conversations that challenged that belief that I realized those feeling were impressed upon me by society ... and the men who run it.

I want more young people, and young women in particular to not wait that long hating core aspects of themselves. I think this book will be a great tool in achieving this.

Sure, you can jump right in and hand a kid The Handmaid's Tale or A Room of One's Own and wish them good luck. Realizing how messed up the world is sucks enough, but trying to wade through a masterpiece of literature can be daunting; those texts are important but they aren't universally recreational. Sometimes you just want to enjoy something. If you want something that helps empower young girls while still being F U N: hand them this and they can see and recognize the injustices, empathize with characters they recognize from their lives, and have fun watching people fall in love. The language is easier to parse and the plot is quick paced and gripping.

There are men in this book that are good men, there are "nice guys", there are men who have to do bad things or hurt others to survive (there are state sanctioned systems encouraging that behavior), there are women who hurt others to protect themselves (taking power and keeping it so that you don't wind up on the bottom of the pile drowning in the mud), there are women who consistently reach out and help even when helping would be self sacrificial, there are women who meet secretly in the night working together to plan and create slow social change. The world is rich and the characters who inhabit it are multifaceted.

While the theme of this book is the thing that pushed it from 4 to 5 stars for me, I had little to no qualms with any aspect of this book.

I have a feeling that some folks will have issues with the ending of this one. I want to say that I appreciate it. It is ambiguous in a way that allows folks from two different camps to feel satisfied. Either way that you read it, and I do feel both readings are valid, I feel like it brings different aspects of the story to a close. The truly remarkable thing is that regardless of your reading the tone or the theme of the book doesn't change. When authors leave their endings open like this it can easily skew the intended theme. The end being the last thing you are left with as you end the book and perhaps the thing that you think about and question the most and allowing for an open end while maintaining a firm grasp on the theme is incredibly impressive to me.

This was my first 5 star read of the year and I wanted to just shout some positive things into the void.