14 new YA books to read during sweater season this October

The Grace Year – Kim Liggett

This incredibly timely dystopian novel is basically YA’s answer to recent hits like The Power and classics like The Handmaid’s Tale. The Grace Year is deeply disturbing, extremely compelling and very difficult to put down.

In Garner County, women are not to be trusted. Supposedly, they harbor a dangerous mystical power that allows them to manipulate and seduce men. Therefore, when they turn sixteen, they’re all sent off on what is known as a “grace year,” a Hunger Games-esque trial of survival on a nearby island that will allow them to return home, marry and live productive lives of childbearing, work and service.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney dreams of a different world than the one she lives in now. She doesn’t particularly want to marry, nor does she want to view every other woman as a potential rival or mortal threat.  But as her Grace Year approaches, she realizes that she must not only survive the elements, but everyone around her as well – from the poachers that haunt the woods seeking to kidnap young women, to the other girls exiled with her.

The novel’s synopsis goes into a little more detail.

"No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden. In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive. Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other."

The Grace Year is available on October 8.