Read with Fern

I’m no stranger to YA dystopian novels, and usually enjoy them more than their adult counterparts because there’s more action and hope and less weird sexual tension and overall despair. When I started The Grace Year, I was intrigued by the plot, and ready to have some twists thrown my way.

Instead, I got an irritatingly boring plot that took a bizarre turn at every point. I love a book that takes everything you’re told in the beginning and flips it, which is what Liggett tried to do. But instead, every new twist felt out of place and underdeveloped. 

The book starts with Tierney (Main Character Energy Activated), a girl who’s oh-so-different from all the other girls. She’s part of a family with several daughters, living in a town ruled by fear. And again, this is a classic set-up, no issues yet. But what is the town afraid of? The ambiguously evil power of young girls specifically found in 16-year-old girls. Again, this is still pretty par for the course. For as long as the townspeople can remember, they’ve done a purge. Once a year, they send all the girls that are currently 16 out into the wilderness. They’re taken somewhere and forced to survive on their own for an entire year. The day they return is the day the next group leaves. So the town always has a group of their daughters just out in the woods, struggling to survive. And if one of the girls doesn’t return, all of her younger siblings are instantly exiled from the town and are forced to live with the prostitutes who stay right outside the gate. 

And look, is this the best set-up in the world? No, but it had my curiosity piqued. This was largely due to the fact none of the townspeople are allowed to speak about the Grace Year or what happens. Even when Tierney’s older sisters and mother are getting her ready to leave the night before, there’s no helpful words of wisdom or a breakdown on what’s really going to happen. They just pack her bags and say “good luck sweetie.” Then there’s a quick, weird, child-bride scene where all the girls wear veils and the men who’ve chosen/bought the right to marry them push back their veils before they leave in something like a group marriage announcement. Tierney is furious because her boy bestie unveils her, which basically says “Surprise bitch, we’re getting married as soon as you return. I know you thought I viewed you as an autonomous person and so I should’ve discussed this with you first, but I didn’t because I’m a man and I don’t have to.”

Then the girls are marched out of town by some guards. As a side note, it’s wholly unclear what kind of governing powers this town has and where it is in relation to anything else. The whole book gives major “protestant settlers in the American northeast” and the vibe of “we’re the only civilization in the entire world” really adds to that. So these guards are ambiguously governed by someone, and most are notably eunuchs. The guards are responsible for their group for the entire year. The new group passes the old group on the outskirts of town, and the returning girls, to put it nicely, look like shit, which freaks out the new girls. 

Then the hike commences. The group walks for days, with only the guards knowing where they’re headed. There’s some creepy forest vibes, and the guards warn the girls that in the woods are poachers, following them. And the poachers are allowed to kill them if they leave the path or the group at any point. A few girls are picked off on the journey, with one even committing suicide. Then the group arrives at an enclosed area. The girls are led inside, and the guards tell them they are not allowed out for one year. The guards are there to patrol the fence and make sure none of the girls escape. 

At this point, we’re like 15% into the book. We’ve met a few of the secondary girls, and we’ve gotten a whole lot of internal dialogue from Tierney about how she’s so much smarter than everyone. At this point, I had a lot of questions, but there was a lot of room for the plot to develop.

The girls go inside the fence and there’s some basic buildings with beds and minimal supplies. There’s also a well with green water. Tierney doesn’t drink the water because it looks gross, but everyone else does. If you’re reading this, I’m sure you saw where this was going. All the other girls start having hallucinations and start egging each other on. The days just kind of continue, with girls getting high off their asses and the Resident Mean Girl/Head Bitch in Charge, Kiersten, starts convincing all the other girls that they’re “getting their powers.” So the girls start practicing all their super cool powers. Kiersten has mind control (and a name absolutely incorrect for a dystopian novel). One of the other girls can move the moon. All super cool stuff. Tierney is bored and says “fuck all of y’all” and spends most of her time exploring the rest of the enclosure.

Tierney discovers her sister smuggled seeds into her clothes, and starts a little garden. She also finds a fresh stream, so she’s doing great. As the reader, I was still invested. It weirdly had been 5 months of this and the girls were basically starving themselves to death, but everything was mildly chill. Then Kiersten insists Tierney “find her power” and Tierney says no, so Kiersten tries to have the girls kill Tierney (arguably justified, just play along, Tierney). She escapes the group, but there’s really no place for her to go. Except that one spot in the fence that’s rotted, so she pushes herself out of the hole and back into the actual wilderness where it’s illegal* for her to be. 

* We have no idea what the legal or government system of this town is.

This is where I gave up on believing in this book. Tierney spends the next several months, like literally five months, Tierney just casually lives in a deer blind with a poacher named Ryker as he helps heal all of her wounds. (And yes, all it took was the name Ryker for me to hate him). Ryker explains “what’s really going on” to Tierney. The poachers are men who get paid by the town to kill any of the girls who escape. They literally sit in these deer blinds for an entire year, hoping to kill a few 16-year-old girls so they can feed their families. And the easiest way to get a bonus is to sell the girls’ body parts for the townspeople to eat! That’s right, the town uses the dead bodies of their daughters like rhino horns or elephant tusks! Isn’t this so normal for a YA NOVEL??

And I know what you’re thinking, thank God Tierney met Ryker. She can’t go back because the girls would be suspicious of her disappearance and survival, so they have to stay in this deer blind forever and be in love. And guess what?? That’s the middle half of the book! Isn’t that so sweet and fun! She’s 16 and being starved and hunted for sport, and he’s an adult man getting paid by cannibals. But he’s such a gentleman that he waits for her to dry hump him before they have sex. Then they’re fully in love, and Ryker has a plan. They’re going to run away and live happily ever after! Isn’t that sweet?! No!! The other poachers come and kill him!

So back into the enclosure Tierney goes, chased by a bunch of furious men who’ve been living in deer blinds for 10 months and are going insane. And then she’s back with the ayahuasca-tripping girls who’ve been high off their asses and starving to death for 5 months. They’re way more tame at this point, and she’s able to convince them she came back to life with magic. She then spends the rest of the year just feeding everyone from her garden and getting them to drink clear water. There’s a weird blip of a side plot where one of the guards is obsessed with Tierney and is trying to woo her, but she ends up killing him and it’s very out of nowhere.

And here we are, at the end of the year. Some girls survived, some girls didn’t, it seems pretty average in terms of success rates. Before they leave the enclosure, they vow to fix this for all the girls that will come after them. Not by standing up to the system of oppression or preparing the next rounds of girls. No, they simply clean the buildings before they leave and put a little note on the well. “Do not drink <3!”

When they arrive back in town, things are crazy. Not because anything good happens, it’s just revealed that Tierney got knocked up by Ryker, which is a huge no-no since none of the girls are supposed to be able to leave the enclosure. So Michael (I know, you forgot about him too! It’s her betrothed bestie that she hates for promising to marry her) steps forward and says “Yes, Tierney’s magic was allowing me to have sex with her while we dreamed. That’s my baby.” And everyone says, “Ah yes, that happens oh so often, of course.” Seriously.

Then Tierney goes on this whole long spiel about how she’s going to fix this and make it better for her little girl that’s about to be born. You know what she does? Absolutely nothing. I had seen so many reviews mention the feminism in this book and the strength of women, but this was a misogynistic book through and through. The women “allow” the men to stay in power and continue a system of diabolical suppression and literal cannibalism. But they have a MaGiCaL sEcReT lAnGuAgE wItH fLoWeRs. The only reason I finished this book was because I thought “Surely Liggett is able to tie this all together somehow into a better ending.” And that absolutely did not happen.

I think there are a lot of YA dystopian novels that are exceptionally well-written and have plots that are purposefully designed to make you think about things in a new and uncomfortable way while keeping you fully invested. This is not one of them. There are so many plot holes, unnecessary pivots, and underdeveloped characters that it’s almost impossible to keep your brain locked in. 

However, if you’re looking for just a “brain off” dystopian novel or if any of this book’s weirdly specific traits caught your eye, you should definitely give it a shot!