I had to walk away and let this book settle before writing a review. I've seen many reviews talking about comparisons between The Handmaid's Tale, The Hunger Games, and other dystopian tales. I felt it was more The Handmaid's Tale meets Gather the Daughters. There is a bone chilling bleakness to the story with only snippets of relief. This is not a light fluffy our heroes will win through and make everything better kind of read. This is more of a how did we get here and will our heroes manage to make a difference story. Well worth the time to read it is already on my reread list. ( )

The plot of this book sounded very interesting to me, but also I didn't expect much from it, just another ya dystopia. And it is kind of what I got for the most of the book. Some stereotypical characters, some dumb decisions, a lot of focus on the nasty stuff for shock value. Despite that, it was a good 3 star read, and I enjoyed it.

It was the end that made this book so much better, though. The characters were forced to grow up and suddenly it was more adult, more reasonable, more realistic. And I loved it. Enough to raise the whole book up to 4 stars. ( )

A fairly intriguing if familiar-sounding plotline, with side characters more interesting than the main ones and a writing style that is solid although suffers from lack of concise editing. "The Grace Year" is a brutal YA dystopian novel that takes a look at girls who are coming of age and a society that pits women against one another, and honestly I thought this would be a bit more empowering.

There are little bits scattered throughout the story that say "hey, women fighting each other because of men wielding power over us is BAD and we need to change this" yet so little is done to actually do so. The ending promises a vague hint of uprising at some unknown point in the future, but that does nothing to save the lack of change that actually occurs on page. Despite being action-packed at points the story DRAGSSSS in the middle and often repeats itself. Readers see the same scenes, similar dialogue, and ideas presented over and over again until it feels like walking in circles. This is made even more frustrating because the main character is quite flat, although does become more interesting and fleshed-out as she seeks out other female friendship. Finally, I was very confused and sad to see the underlying queer storyline dropped totally? It sort of felt like Liggett wanted to go places with this and then just forgot to do so.

Again, the core story is intriguing, and I binge read the book in a couple of days, but I think it could have done with heavy editing in the middle and some rewriting to really make everything coherent and more punchy. A younger reader who hasn't read something similar might enjoy this more! I found it to be very similar to books such as "Gather the Daughters" by Jennie Melamed (2017) which I enjoyed totally but definitely made "The Grace Year" less exciting for me personally. ( )

This book is very reminiscent of Hunger Games. I kept thinking of the parallels while reading it. It's an interesting concept, not really one I've read before, but the whole 'lock them up and watch them murder each other' thing feels a bit old. It's not a bad book, just really not my favorite, it feels like it had room to be way better but it just kind of fell short. I did read it at like 1.9x speed as an audiobook, and that might have played into it a little because it seemed like a lot of it was rushed, but that might translate differently if you read it normally or listen at a slower speed. I could go on for longer about this book, but I'm not going to cause my point's been made as it is. If you enjoyed Hunger Games and want to relive that, read this. ( )

this book was bonkers. it was very good, a good mix of suspense, and dystopian world building. ( )