“Liggett combines a dystopian society with a horrific survivor story and a dark fairy tale in The Grace Year. Young girls are believed to be magic, so they are forced into exile for their 16th year in order to release their powers. After their year away, they are expected to come back ready for a docile home life. But not all of them come home alive, and many come home changed. Liggett’s story is haunting and lyrical, an intriguing page-turner filled with love, brutality, violence, and hope.”
— Scott Lange, The Bookman, Grand Haven, MI
The instant New York Times bestseller, a speculative YA thriller in the vein of The Hunger Games and The Power, now in trade paperback.
No one speaks of the grace year. It's forbidden. In Garner County, girls are 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. Tierney James dreams of a better life--but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that there's more to fear about the grace year than the brutal elements and the poachers in the woods. Their greatest threat may very well be each other. With sharp prose and gritty realism, Kim Liggett's 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.