Last year, I shared a book at this time of year that fit perfectly with the moody, cool, often damp world that is November. This year, coincidentally, I have another book that fits that category. It’s spooky season, but this book is more in the haunting category.

What makes this one special is that both of my daughters have been telling me to read it for quite some time. This is of note, because they rarely like the same books. When I finally started reading it, I finished in less than two days because I couldn’t stop.

The setting of the book is one extremely conservative town in Garner County. When young women of the town come of age, they are all sent together to an encampment in the woods to spend a year and get rid of their “magic.”

Since no one is allowed to talk about the Grace Year, none of the girls have a full picture of what to expect. They have seen the condition of young women when they return, if they return, but it’s impossible to know what happens out there.

The author takes us there, on the shoulder of one of the girls. As each page turns, new layers peel off, giving the reader more perspective about what’s really going on.

The Grace Year is horror at times, thriller at times, but the violence is not as explicit as it might be in an adult book. It begins in the autumn, takes place over the course of a year, and ends back in autumn, which makes it perfect to read at this time of year.

The social commentary on our own times is thinly veiled, as is often the the case in YA, a genre that doesn’t often operate in subtleties. Yet the story does have a subtler story to tell, as well, of women living in a society where they have little power, finding ways to subvert the control that the men exert over them.

Perhaps the best part of the book for me was when my daughters saw that I was reading it, and asked me, eyes bright, what I thought, then we geeked out about the plot twists together.