I received a copy from Netgalley.

I had forgotten I pre ordered this one so wound up with a finished Kindle copy as well. The premise of this YA fantasy sounded interesting enough, two different sisters have spent their lives prepping for a certain roles and something happens and their positions get switched over.

I’m torn on this one because the story itself was interesting enough to want to know what was going to happen but everything felt very flat and under developed. In this fantasy world women have no rights. They’re not allowed even allowed to read, or study – they’re there to either marry and raise a family or work without questions in dull factories. The most coveted role for a woman is a Grace – the perfect example of the demure subservient woman.

Perspective Graces are chosen and get to live a life of luxury at the palace to be of service to the King and his Heir as and when called for. Serina has been prepping her whole life to be a Grace, her younger more rebellious sister Nomi is going to be her Handmaiden. At least that way they will be together. A Grace’s family is looked after and lives a life of wealth as well.  Serina is all light and fluff. Nomi is the more serious twin. She wants to be able to make her own choices, her own decisions without the approval of a man. She’s already rebelled in her own way and learned something she shouldn’t be able to do.

Yet when the girls get to the palace, it’s Nomi who’s chosen as a Grace, and has no idea how to handle it. She’s never been interested in learning things like dancing and needlepoint. She has also caught the attention of the king’s Heir, Malachi, who’s supposed to be cold and mean. And dangerous.

At the start of this I had the feeling that the reader is supposed to be rooting for Nomi because she doesn’t want to conform to the role set out for her. However, I found Nomi to be an idiot. She makes a major error and Serina pays for it to protect her sister. Nomi is floundered by being a Grace, and now has to do it without Serina’s help.

She also manages to catch the eye of the Heir’s brother Asa, who’s very handsome and charming (and much nicer than Malachi). He’s kind and helpful. I found Nomi to be utterly annoying and eye rollingly stupid in some of her actions while she gets to know Asa and starts falling head over heels for him. Graces are not permitted to take lovers. They are for the Heir only.  

Serina’s story, meanwhile, took a really unexpected turn. She’s forced into a tough situation where she has to rely on her strength and self preservation to survive, it’s a massive shock to her system and it’s utterly captivating. Quite horrific as well and brutal as Serina navigates her new word. Serina turned out for me to be the much stronger sister, and she was the one who drove the story forward to keep me interested in reading.

Nomi’s chapters made me want to throw things.

While the story was fairly fast paced, there was something…lacking from the story as a whole. The characters weren’t really fleshed out much, Serina was the only one in my opinion who showed some major growth. And if the novel was all about her, then I probably would have rated it higher. She’s the reason I want to read the next book.

One thing I did really like was the sense of family and belonging to each other the girls have, they would do anything for each other. Their older brother Renzo has a part to play in the story too and he’s part of that close-knit family unity. The end picked up a bit, there was a twist which is one of those I should have seen that coming from a mile away (but didn’t) things. While this is never going to be a favourite fantasy, it certainly had potential and I’m interested to see where the story will go next.

Thank you Netgalley and Hachette Children’s Group for the review copy.

I love YA fantasies about young girls finding their power, but I’m a bit overwhelmed specifically by the ‘women are super oppressed because men find them dangerous’ trope that keeps popping up.

Grace and Fury was absolutely fine as a YA fantasy (no magic!) and OK kind of novel really. The best thing about it was that because it followed two sisters, it could intertwine two completely different stories: one the rags to riches tale of the oppressed girl thrown into a life of glittering privilege, and one about the privileged girl losing everything she’d worked for and forced to survive on an brutal island prison. This worked really well because, coupled with cliffhanger chapter endings, there was almost never a dull moment and it made it easy to flip the pages and consume.

However, there was something about the characterisation that seemed really… I don’t know… shallow? I couldn’t tell you anything about the characters except that one was sad and guilty about her circumstances and the other was angry and guilty. I have no idea how they really felt about anything. The romances for both of them were really sudden, and I hate to say it, instalove: but not in the usual way! The girls didn’t lay eyes on their beaus and instantly fall in love, no; it was more like ‘no mention of developing feelings whatsoever, then suddenly making out.’ Like… we didn’t really get to see into their heads beyond the first layer of their emotional state of being sad or angry (or scared). Nothing developed, it just happened, like flipping a switch.

My biggest problem though, was the actual inciting incident that split the sisters apart. 

Once I got over my major issue with the plot, I actually enjoyed it in places! The description of the food and clothes were nice. There were a couple of interesting twists that you’ll probably be able to guess but it’s nice to have them confirmed. It was really great to see Serina’s characterisation grow from this plus-size pretty pampered thing to a scrappy survivor forced to kill, although Nomi was much more annoying if only because she was so freaking mouthy all the time and no one really seemed to care. It’s not brave or spunky to be rude to royalty, it’s stupid, and it annoyed me.

Overall, if you skip this one I don’t think you’re missing much, because it’s nothing we’ve not seen before. However, if you’ve not read much YA fantasy, you might really enjoy this and the story it is setting up for Book #2.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I’ve posted quotes from this book before but now that it’s finally been released to the masses, I implore people to send any teen girls they know to read it. It’s one of those titles that, while it entertains (there’s a fight to the death island, guys!!!), there is this subliminal theme that manages to teach without being preachy. Every girl I’ve passed it along to returns it with “yeah, it was okay…” and then a week later comes back with “hey, you remember that book? Well, I’ve been thinking about it and…”

It’s about family values and loyalty, it’s about defying convention, it’s about following the rules (and breaking them) and learning how to define yourself when the world is against you. It’s about rebelling when you have no rights, the true definition of freedom for women, and finding confidence and strength in yourself. AND YET IT’S NOT BORING AS HELL!!

It’s a short book, a very fast read, and one that won’t be an instant hit but will be one that keeps people thinking and talking long after because you realize something else about it every time you remember a single scene. While I recc books all the time, it’s super rare I actually PUSH one and I’m totally doing that here. Read it. Be a bit disappointed. Then let it simmer and you’ll understand 

I first looked at this book and thought it would be a 'warring princess book', or something similar. I was so wrong. Books that challenge the way in which females are brought up to think of themselves, and encourage them to see the different sides of their true nature are brave, and necessary, and even if you read this and see none of that, 'Grace and Fury' is still an amazing book. Women can be graceful, and at the same time, be emboldened with fury, and I'm grateful for all the writers out there right now giving us readers so many strong female characters. 

Thank you to Rockstar Book Tours for having me on this book tour, because Tracy has written a book with some inspiring 'ladies'; this one caught me by surprise, big time!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, TRACY BANGHART

Tracy Banghart grew up in rural Maryland and spent her summers on a remote island in northern Ontario. All of that isolation and lovely scenery gave her the time to read voraciously and the inspiration to write her own stories. Always a bit of a nomad, Tracy now travels the world Army-wife style with her husband, son, cat, and sweet pupper Scrabble. She wrote Grace and Fury while living in Hawaii.

Tracy's beautiful website and links to all her other social media is *HERE*

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: GRACE AND FURY

Author: Tracy Banghart

Pub. Date: July 31, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Formats: Hardcover, eBook

Pages: 320

Synopsis:

In a world where women have no rights, sisters Serina and Nomi Tessaro face two very different fates: one in the palace, the other in prison.

Serina has been groomed her whole life to become a Grace--someone to stand by the heir to the throne as a shining, subjugated example of the perfect woman. But when her headstrong and rebellious younger sister, Nomi, catches the heir's eye, it's Serina who takes the fall for the dangerous secret that Nomi has been hiding.

Now trapped in a life she never wanted, Nomi has only one way to save Serina: surrender to her role as a Grace until she can use her position to release her sister. This is easier said than done. A traitor walks the halls of the palace, and deception lurks in every corner. But Serina is running out of time, imprisoned on an island where she must fight to the death to survive and one wrong move could cost her everything.

My Review (previously posted): 

I usually have a ‘thing’ about books with images of people on the cover (is that strange?), so when I first saw ‘Grace and Fury’ with the striking, and beautiful, photo of the two girls, who are the two main characters in the book - Serina (Grace) and Nomi (Fury) - I was a bit flummoxed. I’d heard good things, PLUS the caveat is that we only see half of their faces. I could continue!

‘Grace and Fury’ also turned out to not be your usual ‘princess’ tale, even though YA fantasy is inundated with them, and that was my worry going in. Quite quickly, the story of Serina and Nomi was turned upside down. Serina and Nomi live in a world where women basically have no rights, and they have few choices as to what they are going to do with their lives. Serina has spent her short life being groomed to become a ‘Grace’, basically a submissive concubine for the Heir to the throne. Nomi, her sister, smarter and more rebellious, is Serina’s handmaiden, and makes the mistake one day of being caught ‘reading’ while they’re at the royal palace, but Serina takes the fall for this, and is exiled to Mount Ruin as punishment, and Nomi remains as one of the chosen Graces; they’re both suddenly severely out of their element.

What Serina finds though, is that the women on Mount Ruin are used for, is basically entertainment for the guards there, fighting to their deaths like gladiators. And Nomi is trapped inside a life she didn’t want, inside the palace, where although she may not have to fight for her food, instead she’s ‘competing’ for a place at the side of the Heir, something she never wanted in the first place. She is in an environment where there are few people around her, and deception by those close to her feels likely in every conversation she has. They are both life sentences that they see no immediate way out of.

Both sisters try and hatch plans to escape and get to each other, and they don’t know who to trust, and what’s fascinating about this novel is seeing their individual growth and self-discovery, particularly Serina’s, as they are locked inside their individual new inescapable (and very lonely) hells. The world that is created by author Tracy Banghart is particularly brutal and some of the scenes that are written on the island of Mount Ruin are especially bloody and violent; the fighting that occurs between the women is at-once survivalist but forced by the guards, and the descriptions of it are very detailed. This book certainly isn’t your usual ‘princess in the palace fairytale’.

We are left with a grand cliffhanger and I’m fascinated to know what happens next, especially since the ‘supporting’ characters played a big part in creating a lot of intrigue and interesting storylines. ‘Grace and Fury’ surprised me and gave me a new ferocious, if not bloody, wake-up call to the princess fairytale; these two sisters are saying a big fat ‘NO’ to the patriarchy in this one and I hope it has as strong a voice in the sequel. 

AND GUESS WHAT? There's a GIVEAWAY!!!!

3 winners will receive a finished copy of GRACE AND FURY, US Only.

Just head to the GIVEAWAY LINK by ENTERING  *HERE*

And to follow the entire Grace & Fury Book Blog Tour here is the TOUR SCHEDULE

And you MUST BUY it! Some links: Amazon, B&N.com, iBooks, and Book Depository

I hope you love it as much as I did; tell me if you have read it and if you plan to order it!! And I'll tell you how lovely Tracy is; my friend told her my birthday was coming up, when she was at a book signing, and Tracy surprised me by mailing a signed bookplate and card! How awesome is that? (I sooo want the pin next!)

Anyway, good luck with the giveaway, and HAPPY READING!

x ~ K

Many thanks to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers as well as the author, Tracy Banghart, for the opportunity to read an advanced copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.