We are the weaker sex, weaker no more," the girl says. The women answer with a primal roar."

Rating: 5 stars

The Grace Year! Welcome to my book of the year for 2019. It's only June, but I'm confident in this book and there's no way any other book can sway me the way this has. If you read one book this year, it should be this one. I received a copy of this book from Ebury Publishing in exchange for a review, which hasn't impacted my opinion on this book. That opinion being that this book is an absolute masterpiece.

The Grace Year is a story about womanhood and sisterhood, wrapped up in a dystopia that forces women to compete against each other for the affection of men. In the county, girls that reach their sixteenth year are lined up to be chosen. Those who are chosen as wives are veiled, promised a rich and comfortable future as long as they bear sons. And as long as they can survive being sent away for their Grace Year. Because young girls growing into their womanhood are believed to carry powerful magic and they must burn it out of themselves before they can be the perfect pious wives and mothers that their husbands and sons deserve. I don't want to go into the plot of this too much, because this was nothing that I expected and I wouldn't want to rob another reader of the raw emotional experience of reading this book.

Being married off isn't a privilege to me. There's no freedom in comfort. They're padded shackles, to be sure, but shackles nonetheless.

This book is a feminist experience, but it's also so much more than that. It's a lesson on womanhood, and the importance of supporting the women in our lives. I couldn't put this book down for a single second, and found myself itching to read it while I was at work. I had it open on the kindle app on my phone before I'd even taken my coat off when I got home. It was utterly addictive, and I think that's because the girls-turned-women in this story felt like versions of myself. Tierney, strong and wilful and desperate to be free, and Gertie, quiet and hopeful. Even Kiersten was relatable, the moments when I found myself cruel or cold to other girls as a teenager - an unfortunate side-effect of an all girl's school, even if I like to think of myself as mostly a good person. I needed to know what would happen to them, not because I wanted a happy ending, but because I needed it for them.

This novel pulls absolutely no punches. It doesn't so much as dabble as throw itself whole-heartedly into the dark realities of this world. Girls bodies being sold for sex or, worse, to be turned into medicines to extract their 'magic'. A Lord of the Flies-esque community where the girls turned on each other for nothing, and where women are punished for being anything but a cookie cutter outline of a perfect wife. It's a book full of mutilations and murder, believable even in its medieval-dystopia world. Every line seems carefully crafted, and you don't have to look far to see allegories to our society tucked away between the lines. Still, I personally felt like this was a story of hope.

The ending of this novel is ambiguous, but I'm glad for that. There wasn't a magical fix-it for their flawed society any more than there's a magical fix-it for ours. Instead, The Grace Year teaches us that we should be kind and supportive of other women, and that if we work together instead of against each other, we can achieve magical things. I finished this book feeling like working with a witchy tribe of strong women, I could achieve more than any years spent competing against other women. It made me want to be better, for Tierney and for my nieces growing up in the real, harsh world.

I hope all my friends and family are ready to hear me gush about this until September when I can force them all to read it.

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”

Rating: 5 stars

I read this book when I was a teenager, and reread it this week as part of my 100 book bucket list challenge, with the entire series listed on the poster. I loved Northern Lights as a child, and I absolutely adored the Golden Compass movie. I even played the Golden Compass game. Rereading books I loved as a kid always worries me, because I know there's a risk I'll ruin something I've loved for years by finding out it's not as good as I always thought. This is not the case with Northern Lights.

This book is so good. The world-building is ridiculously good and immersive, and considering that Lyra is 11-years old, she's a fantastic main character. It's very easy for young protagonists to be frustrating or annoying to read, especially when the whole book is from their perspective, but she's realistically portrayed. At times, Lyra is selfish, naive and childish - exactly as she should be. She's also clever, and a fast learner which means even as an adult reader I didn't feel slowed down by her perspective.

Also, more importantly, this book has Iorek Byrnison in it, who is one of my favourite characters ever. I love him, and everything about him.

Spoiler

The fight between Iorek and Iofur gives me life every single time, especially the moment when he rips Iofur's jaw clean off. I haven't watched the movie in years, and I still vividly remember that scene. "Yes, that is all."

The ending of this book also gets me every single damn time, and I feel just as angry as betrayed as I did the first time - even ten years later and knowing what's coming.

I'm moving straight onto Subtle Knife next, but I'm less excited about that, because I remember disliking the second and third books the first time I read them.

Spoiler

When you created this freaking amazing world, why send her to a different universe? I wanna read about Lyra's world foreverrrrr with witches and daemons.

I am hoping that reading them as an adult, I'll see something that I overlooked as a teenager that makes me love the second and third books too.

//Rating in 2013: 3 stars.

"your black is not my black" and "your weird is not my weird" and "your beautiful is not my beautiful," and that's okay.

Rating: 4 stars.

Full review on my blog as of 06/12/19

Before I get into this review properly, I want to put in the caveat that this book wasn't written for me. I'm an English white woman from a reasonably privileged family, I can't know what it's like to be a black teenager in America so I won’t pretend that I can understand a lot of the cultural nuance in this book. That being said, I still found this book to be super engaging and very accessible.

I think this book is important on so many levels. It's unapologetic in the way it celebrates blackness and black identity, and it also handles the difficulties of relationships at seventeen so well. It shows her struggling with her boyfriend's opinions differing to hers, it shows her handling her family's expectations of her, and it shows her handling the world's expectations of her as a black woman. There were dialogues in this book that I might not personally agree with but I fully believe that all of them are super important and that this book is a love letter to young black women who want to challenge the world they're living in.

I also particularly loved the way that Brittney Morris called out not just the racism that POC face on a daily basis, but also the racism that can exist within POC communities. Keira is torn between being not white enough and not black enough, and has to find her own identity and how she relates to her culture. There's a twist in the book that I think is really well done. I was surprised but also felt really vindicated for some of my earlier misgivings about certain plot points, and the moral lesson of this book ended up being impressively lightly-handled for a heavy topic and didn't drag the book down from it's pop-culture packed, fast-paced tone.

I'm not going to write a full review on this one, but hooo boyyyy. Heavy and powerful, that's Boo, and I'm a little weepy. Real glad this book was recommended to me, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Read with care, though. This book is dark and deals with heavy topics: suicide, school shootings, murder, afterlife, self harm, violence and vigilante justice.

May Johnny and Boo's blendship live on forever.