The Grace Year
Ratings94
Average rating3.8
I just loved and hated this book, and it was amazing!
[PT]
Bom, quando eu achava que a era das distopias já tinha acabado, em 2019 saiu o livro O ano de Graça, ou Grace Year em original. E devo dizer que isto foi uma das leituras mais psicadélicas e fascinantes que eu li.
Voltamos à Era Negra modernizada, onde a religião predomina todas as decisões e a mulher é vista apenas como um “acessório” nesta sociedade patriarcal. Além disso, a mulher ao nascer já é impura pois porque tem a capacidade de seduzir o homem e isso é inadmissível. De forma as mulheres serem purificadas, elas passam um ano naquilo que se chama “Ano de Graça” quando atingem os 16 anos, no entanto, nenhuma mulher mais velha fala sobre esse ano e sabe-se que este afeta muito o estado físico e psicológico das mesmas. Sendo também que existem mulheres que nunca voltam. Acompanhamos então uma rapariga de 16 anos Tierney James que vai para o seu Ano de Graça para ser purificada.
Devo admitir que este livro dispertou-me horror, sentimento de incapacidade e injustiça como poucos o conseguiram. Eu não consegui parar de ler até chegar ao final do livro, porque isto prendeu-me demasiado. A refleção das relações entre homens e mulheres são muito semelhantes daquilo que encontramos por vezes nos nossos dias, e também a própria relação entre mulheres pode ser aproximada às muitas relações atuais.
É um livro horrível, mas muito bem escrito!
“The things we do to girls. Whether we put them on pedestals only to tear them down, or use them for parts and holes, we're all complicit in this.”
An interesting novel that doesn't live up to the hype.
Tierney, a completely bland narrator, is sent, along with all the other girls of her age, to live in the woods for a year. How this tradition came to be established is never touched upon; and no one is allowed to talk about it, which is terribly convenient from a story-telling perspective if you haven't got a rationale for your novel's premise. The pacing's solid but all the characters are like stick figures and the world-building is flimsy. Ultimately, it felt like a concept in search of a story.
Thanks to St. Martin's Press who very kindly sent me an advance review copy.
did not like the main character. did not like the world or really understand it and what the magic was. and then there was the most out of pocket romance ever
This book is infuriating. The nicely crafted atmosphere and compelling story are suffocated by very typical and annoying YA tropes and plot devices.
“Your eyes are wide open, but you see nothing.”
This book is... fucked up.
It's got gore, magic, feminism, adventure, murder.
The ending hurt me.
I don't really even know how to rate this because it was so good but also so... awful? But in a good way.
DNF @ 54%. 2.5 stars.
I'm so disappointed - this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. But I had the hardest time getting into this because I had NO backstory. How did we get here? They hint that there's places that are not like they're society.. what are they like? Why is this different? What is up with the magic? Why are their poachers? Who are they? Based on other reviews I know some of these questions get answered later on but I'm just way too confused to get into the story and honestly not enjoying my time. I see so many people are enjoying this and I can definitely see why but this was just a miss for me.
Hunger games x Lord of the flies x Maze runner + some unnecessary romances
Great atmosphere (spooky/ disturbing)
Unexpected twists
But I didn't like the romance so 3 ⭐️
holy shit. I hate this book so much. It is such an absolute pain in the ass. I didn't like any of the characters until the very very end. I think its stupid, and nothing was really solved. Like.... yes now we know that the magic is not real, but the grace year isnt gone. rykers dead. and micheal is there. God i really did not like it. and then ending on a cliff hanger that doesnt even need another book to finish is just cruel. I guess its fine as is but gosh i really hoped something more would happen like, idk, when tiereny gets back she tells everyone how the grace year is a bunch of bull shit ? what abt that author. then there could have been a war or something. jesus fucking christ man. What a painful book.
This books started out as one of the most frustrating books i've ever read. But her growth from ‘pick me' girl boss feminism into a holistic feminism that truly supports and carries the women around her with humility was interesting to see.
The first quarter of the book was also plagued with telling not showing in an effort to quickly establish the character and her circumstances and it drove me nuuuuts. Pretty bad writing choice. If this book were traditionally written in chapters, i would've never made it past the first one or two. I wanted to initially give this book a half star review. She eventually grew into the story she was writing but it took way to long, making this book feel like a draft rather than a completed, published work.
When I started, I was skeptical of this white feminist-y genre of scifi and though it does lack intersectionality, it ended up a riveting and tightly woven YA fantasy story I really enjoyed!
**3.75
Oh wow. Ok.
So that wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I also can't say I was disappointed. I wish I knew about the romance aspect more going into it because that came as a bit of a shock but I still enjoyed that part.
The writing was definitely beautiful and you can absolutely see the author's past experience as a horror author shine through. However, some of the writing was pretty unclear. For example, Tierney would be thinking about running and it wouldn't be clear that she actually started running until a couple paragraphs later when she was already running.
Also, even though the story was in first person, it felt that we weren't really in Tierney's head. We didn't know what she was thinking a lot of the time, or at least not explicitly. It's probably just a personal choice, but I really enjoy when we know a character's plan as they're executing it and there wasn't a lot of that in this book.
(Also, even though she was clever, the main character was... just a tad dumb at points lmao)
That ending, though. Wow.
Everything about the last part, called “The Returning”, was amazing. It was a like a call-to-action and, though it was rather abrupt and I wasn't that crazy about the final line, I personally really enjoyed the vagueness of the ending. It leaves it open to interpretation.
One of my favorite quotes has to be “ She's so incredibly grateful, but she shouldn't have to feel grateful for this—for being treated like a basic human being. None of us should.”
Wow
I was gripped the entire time. A complete roller-coaster going from feeling anger to fear to bliss to heart-wrenching sadness and finally to hopeful determination. The last 10 pages or so gave me goosebumps. The themes of young women discovering their “magic” in societies where they are suppressed and controlled, gave me flashbacks to reading A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. (Without the annoying tree business...) I love this book.
4,0 ⭐
Lo inicie y no puede soltarlo hasta que lo termine. La narrativa es muy buena y la protagonista es memorable, siento que siguió sus principios de inicio a fin.
La historia es excelente, ame el tema de la sororidad entre las mujeres, el lenguaje de las flores y los mensajes/señales que estaban ahí desde el inicio pero que solo logramos comprender hasta que la protagonista ata cabos. He de confesar que inicialmente pensaba que los furtivos eran los mismos hombres que entregaban los velos, pero el desarrollo que la autora le entrego a estos tipos me parece bastante bueno, lo único que no siento no me aclararon fue que sucedía con los “trozos” que estos llevaban al poblado, es decir ¿eran medicina? ¿Eran afrodisiacos?
En fin fue una lectura muy agradable que me dejo satisfecha y sin duda alguna recomendaría.
Wow! What a powerful book! Tierney James is the strongest, smartest, most ambitious protagonist I have ever read. This book is The Hunger Games meets The Handmaids Tale, yet it is also very much it's own story. The theme of women being controlled by men and the hope of joining together for independence was illustrated so incredibly and powerfully. This story was written so beautifully.
I give this book 3 (3.5?) stars because, despite being very powerful and moving, I found many different chunks o
Loved, loved, loved this book! I couldn't put it down and found myself continually antsy to get back to reading it when I had to stop. An eye opening look at what could happen when women are devalued and dehumanized, then pitted against each other for survival. And how the world can be changed if they are brave enough to stand up and fight back, even if it's in subtle ways.
4.5
Lovely writing and never a dull moment. Shows the power of government and influence and how we all must have our eyes open.
3.5 rounded to a 3
When this started off I was invested and loving it but then it just dragged and dragged and I'm like can we get to the point please? I loved the concept and the way it was coming together, I just think it took much too long to get there.
I think the major problem for me was that I listened to this one because it's on Scribd and I didn't feel like buying it. The girls sounded like valley girls and snobby stuck up teenagers and it grated on my nerves. I think this would be much better read.
Usually open-ended books bother me a lot but I enjoyed the way this finished off...with hope.
I found this book very readable, I enjoyed it and it didn't drag at all. The concept was interesting, and ofc I'm gonna pick up anything that can be described as a gender swapped lord of the flies.
The main issue that I did have here was the love story. In a book that's making a clear point about patriarchal brutality, it didn't seem a little bit strange to include a cutesy romance between a literal 16 year old and an adult man whose entire job is to hunt teenage girls to sell their body parts? Even without his job role, he's a grown man and she's a child, and that is not remotely examined or painted as anything other than romantic. I found it incredibly jarring in a book that is fairly explicitly ABOUT misogyny. When he died I was glad about it, which didn't seem like the author's intention. I'd have preferred a sapphic romance or no romance at all.
I also wish the other girls had been given more characterisation, only one really was to any degree. The main character is very Not Like Other Girls, and I don't feel like we really saw her develop beyond that through the book, with just a quick turnaround in the last few pages.
Overall enjoyable read but not really doing what it set out to, IMO.