The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
Hello Books Lovers,
the book I will talk about in this review, out just today for Mondadori, is a book that screams feminism from every pore. A dystopian / futuristic story that sees women as impure, but these same women, or rather our protagonist, will show that there is much more to a woman, from her determination to her intelligence, which are often ignored.
The book is called The Grace Year by Kim Liggett, from the grace year, a year in which the girls, having reached a certain age, 16, will have to face challenges they may not come out alive of and find a husband.
The situation of the test to see if they are worthy or not, I saw it very similar to that in The gilded Ones, but in reality the two situations could not be more different.
Our protagonist, Tierney is an intelligent, tenacious girl, but she is also a person who thinks differently from everyone else and for this reason she is not well seen by the villagers. No one ever talks about the year of grace, it’s taboo, but no one would want to know more than Tierney because she dreams big, dreams of one day reaching a position that will allow her to change the world.
This book, scrolling to the end, is in some ways very brutal, especially for the reason the author wrote it. When she was 13 she was on a train and a man started bothering her and hence the idea of creating a world where women are nothing more than objects to be used for specific purposes and the goal of the grace year is to make them more obedient for when they have to play their role in society.
When I started reading this book I didn’t know it was a dystopian, I was simply drawn by the plot. The plot was beautiful, interesting, but the content was even more so. And if you are wondering, yes in this book there is also a romance component, indeed if I have to be honest what it seemed to me was a triangle and the choice remains in doubt until the last chapter.
I think growing up is a real long grace year. I mean it’s brutal for girls, right? A series of impossible standards are placed on them and we project our fears and desires onto them, and when they falter, they are entirely to blame.
