She’s curious and intelligent, and her father (who always wanted a son) taught her many practical outdoorsy skills, which come in handy during her grace year. It’s good to know your strengths and weaknesses. Tierney might not consider herself a survivor right off, but she is! She’s always planned to be a laborer instead of a wife, because she doesn’t think she has the temperament to be a good, proper spouse.

If she steers clear of poachers, she has her fellow girls to contend with (and one in particular wants her dead).Ĭan Tierney survive the year and make it home? More importantly, with everything she’s learning about herself, her friends, and her society, does she even want to? If she survives starvation, she may be attacked and skinned by poachers who sell parts of the girls as “restorative” medicine. Tierney has spent her childhood trying to discover more about what she’s walking into, but there’s nothing that can prepare her for what she finds when she walks through the front gate and gets locked into the compound. But the other outcome is worse: plenty don’t come back at all. You aren’t supposed to talk about what happens to you during your grace year, even when you watch as the women who return, year after year, come back broken, starved, missing bits of ears, fingers, or limbs. The women in Garner County spend their sixteenth years in the wilderness, banished from their homes, while they release their “magic” so they can return to be obedient, plain wives and laborers.

In my mind, this cover should be a close-up shot of the hollow of a tree in the woods with a ribbon turning into blood near some crushed flowers, as the language of flowers is a big part of the book (and this pink version does have a nod to the flowers with the faint outline). My favorite touch, though is the red ribbon decaying into a trail of blood, and that kind of macabre feels fitting. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that this wasn’t some cover designer’s complete ineptitude and that this juxtaposition is the point and the statement it wants to make? But, honestly, it does throw me a bit. This bubblegum pink cover does not fit its insides. Bonus Factors: Lord of the Flies, Perspective

Tierney the grace year