The Grace Year

I found this book very readable, I enjoyed it and it didn't drag at all. The concept was interesting, and ofc I'm gonna pick up anything that can be described as a gender swapped lord of the flies.

The main issue that I did have here was the love story. In a book that's making a clear point about patriarchal brutality, it didn't seem a little bit strange to include a cutesy romance between a literal 16 year old and an adult man whose entire job is to hunt teenage girls to sell their body parts? Even without his job role, he's a grown man and she's a child, and that is not remotely examined or painted as anything other than romantic. I found it incredibly jarring in a book that is fairly explicitly ABOUT misogyny. When he died I was glad about it, which didn't seem like the author's intention. I'd have preferred a sapphic romance or no romance at all.

I also wish the other girls had been given more characterisation, only one really was to any degree. The main character is very Not Like Other Girls, and I don't feel like we really saw her develop beyond that through the book, with just a quick turnaround in the last few pages.

Overall enjoyable read but not really doing what it set out to, IMO.