The Grace Year

The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett, is a fast-paced, can't-put-down YA novel. Set in a secluded society where women have no rights and are feared for possessing magic, we follow 16 year old Tierney James who is setting off for her grace year. Tierney's always wanted something different than the other girls her age who aspire to be picked for marriage and childbirth before embarking on their grace year, she yearns to be free of the strict restraints her society has set upon her. However, talking about the grace year is strictly forbidden, so no one is certain what awaits them for their year away. All they know is that not everyone ever makes it home, and those that do are forever changed. The girls are led to the encampment by two guards to protect them from the poachers who are waiting in silence to sell their skinned alive bodies on the black market. Can Tierney make it through her grace year alive? 

Written in beautiful descriptive prose, Liggett has given us a riveting novel that is sure to be a hit when it hits the shelves October 8th. Every page brings about new drama and new threats that leaves the reader on the edge of their seat, waiting to find out what happens to our heroine Tierney. While I wish I'd been given more of a back-story on certain characters and how this society evolved to become what it is, I literally couldn't put this book down and stayed up until 4am devouring the pages. 

The Radium Girls

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore is an incredible non-fiction book by Kate Moore. This book won the Best Historical & Biography 2017 on Goodreads, and for good reason! Moore tells the stories of The Radium Girls, a group of young women who were dial painters during World War 1 and suffered excruciating and devastating effects from ingesting radium while working. The narration follows the courageous young women from when they are happy-go-lucky teenagers, happy to have scored a high paying job dial painting. At the time, Radium was a new discovery and everyone believed that Radium was good for you, so no precautions were taken to protect workers against the Radium. However, even as some of the women started having strange health consequences, they were still told that Radium was not harmful and the reasons they were all getting sick was not from their work. They were being lied to. 

The rest of the book follows these courageous as they undergo painful, debilitating Radium side effects with no cure. Their jaws disintegrate, they grow sarcomas, they get weak, they are riddled with pain, their bones are becoming more and more brittle and yet no one believes them. They begin landmark cases in suing the Radium Dial companies that once employed them and are still saying they are innocent. We see all of the young women joining together in both New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois as they suffer through fellow friends dying and sue their former employers to finally get justice and some money to help pay their massive medical bills.  

What The Radium Girls did during this time period of the 1920s-1930s was unheard of at the time, and was monumental for women's and worker's rights. These women are not celebrated enough today and this amazing book helps feature these incredible women who suffered insurmountably. 

             

Emma in the Night

      Emma in the Night is Wendy Walker's second novel, though I haven't yet had a chance to read All is Not Forgotten. This novel tells the aftermath of a broken family trying to put some pieces back together when one of their two daughters returns after randomly vanishing in the night three years ago. Cass returns to her mothers house, pleading for everyone to find her sister Emma. Cass managed to escape from the island where they'd been held, but her sister Emma is still stuck, along with Emma's daughter. Will the police, FBI and forensic psychiatrist who were on the sister's case beforehand be able to wade through the messy family dynamics to find and save Emma in time?
      I've really gotten into psychological thrillers lately, and I kept on trying to get more out of this then I was actually getting. I didn't feel a good connection with the characters, something felt off the entire time. I'm usually very easily able to get attached to the characters, but whether it was the narrative in which the story was told or the writing style, I had a hard time feeling empathy and anything but anger at the mother. The novel ended with a well thought out twist that thankfully tied up all the strings in a satisfying way, but because of the lack of emotional connection, I wasn't as happy a reader as I usually am and like to be.
     Many thanks to Netgalley and St. Martins Press for allowing me access to this novel in exchange for a honest review.