hannabelle

(minor spoilers) The Grace Year is probably the best YA novel I’ve read since Sharon Cameron’s The Forgetting , with a solid cast of sympathetic characters and a truly engrossing plot. When they’re around sixteen years old, the girls of Garner County must spend a titular “grace year” living together in the middle of the woods, during which they expunge themselves of all of their magic. Because this magic is sinful: it could prevent them from fully submitting to their proper roles as wives or workers; it causes upstanding men to lust after them. And it will only grow more dangerous as they enter into adulthood if they don’t fully rid themselves of it. But no one knows what happens during the grace year. Women are forbidden to speak of it, if they survive it. All Tierney James knows for sure is that many women do not survive, and those that come home are forever scarred by whatever happened to them, both physically and mentally. Most girls dream of being selected to enter into marriage ...

(minor spoilers) Conceptually, this book is really cool. In its fantasy world, Cinderella and Prince Charming are important historical figures who ushered in a new age of prosperity for their kingdom. Their fairy tale is now upheld by everyone in a manner reminiscent of a religious text, with each family owning a “palace-approved” storybook that children are expected to memorize and model their lives after. Except no one seems to really care if boys grow up to be loving and gentlemanly like Charming. Girls, on the other hand, must live up to the impossible standards of Cinderella’s perfection or risk bringing shame and ruin upon their families. As the story begins, Sophia is only days away from attending a mandatory ball, at which she and all the other unmarried teenage girls will dress up in the finest their families can afford in order to be more or less auctioned off as wives to the highest bidder. This is an event that girls are supposed to spend their whole lives dreaming of; afte...