As the page turns..

White ribbons for the young girls, red for the grace year girls, and black for the wives.
Innocence. Blood. Death.❞

The Grace Year has gotten already a lot of hype. Pitched as a combination of two very popular books you can easily see why. Heck, this is why I requested an ARC in the first place.

However, I was disappointed in the end, as in my personal opinion, the book needs more polish. I could fill this review with things I liked, with highlighted quotes, but I won't. Sure, the society depicted is very dark and the author walks you through the story with a lot of skill giving you snippets of the way things work, but (that dreadful word) a lot of the relationships felt a) predictable and b) not fully fleshed out.

And that's mainly where the book was weak: the characters. From the main protagonist, whom we follow trying to piece the story together, to the side characters, who are in the end just that: side characters.

Additionally, there were a lot of instances when I wanted to know more about them, which brings me to another problem I had with the book: the pacing. I read the story on a kindle, which showed the reading progress in the corner. At around 70%, the pace picked up and by the end I felt like whole sections were skipped. Even the ending left more to be desired.

Overall, this will be discussed a lot when it will be published eventually in the fall. It will probably be hailed as one of the best blends of dystopian and feminist books ever. I won't be in that crowd. I will tell you what I honestly thought of it: it's an enjoyable read that has its moments and all the makings of a great book, hence the 3 ½ stars but it's far from the best ever written.