Note: This book review contains mild spoilers for The Graces. Major spoilers are hidden with spoiler tags.
The Graces (The Graces #1) by Laure Eve • contains 415 pages • published September 1, 2016 by Faber & Faber • classified as Urban Fantasy, Young Adult • obtained through subscription box • read as paperback • shelve on Goodreads Synopsis:
Everyone said the Graces were witches.
They moved through the corridors like sleek fish, ripples in their wake. Stares followed their backs and their hair.
They had friends, but they were just distractions. They were waiting for someone different.
All I had to do was show them that person was me.
Like everyone else in her town, River is obsessed with the Graces, attracted by their glamour and apparent ability to weave magic. But are they really what they seem? And are they more dangerous than they let on?
Initially I gave The Graces 1.5 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. However, the more I thought about the book, the more it manifested itself as my least favourite one of the year. With that, my rating plummeted to below even a single star.
Obsession Overload
There’s obsession and then there’s Obsession with a capital “O” and full on emphasis. According to the synopsis, River is obsessed with the Graces. That, my friends, doesn’t even begin to capture the degree to which she’s obsessed. She’s so maniacal, I was uncomfortable reading The Graces.
“Oh, Fenrin, you have no idea the lengths you’d have to go to get me to hate you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Even though these words aren’t verbalised, this is just a sample of her very creepy thoughts. She goes on to act on these thoughts, analysing every last shred of the Grace family.
“I had already begun to carefully piece together the exact construction of a Grace life. Maybe if I knew their formula, the combination of elements that made them what they were, I could understand them. Understanding something was one step closer to becoming it.”
So, not only is she obsessed with the Graces, she wants to become one of them. In no way, shape or form is that healthy behaviour. This is such a giant red flag right from the beginning, and sadly, also only one of many. Another massive red flag is the negligent single mother who doesn’t recognise River’s cries for help.
“And maybe. Just maybe. I could be a Grace.
This was the real test. All I had to do was will it to be so.”
The Twilight Comparison
Whenever a YA book is compared to Twilight, I’m wary. YA fiction is so much more than Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight. Despite that, this is an instance where I have to say, The Graces draws much inspiration from Twilight. Since I didn’t like Twilight, it comes as no surprise that I didn’t come to like The Graces either.
First up, meet the Cullens, pardon, the Graces. Beautiful, mysterious, charismatic siblings who everyone admires but can’t get close to. Then there’s the new girl who moves to the not quite rainy but similarly waterlogged (coastal) town. She somehow manages to fall in with the mystical siblings who may not be vampires but still are extraordinary and rumoured witches.
The first half of The Graces read as though the author took lessons directly from Twilight. This sucked a lot of joy out of reading for me.
Lacking Prose and Logic
Every now and then expressions confuzzled me. There were contradiction that no matter how I looked at them made me wonder how stringent the copyediting was.
“I’d spent some time trying to work out their angle, the one thing I could do that would get me on their radar. I could be unusually pretty, which I wasn’t.”
Either she is or she isn’t pretty. It’s not something she could do something about, except if she’d go for the extreme. Plastic surgery, anyone?
View Spoiler »What also ticked me off was the conclusion from the Grace sisters that if River doesn’t like their brother, then she must be gay. River vehemently denies being gay but Summer persists. Seriously, how does not liking one particular person determine anyone’s sexual orientation?
Overly Dramatic
River has a penchant for being overly dramatic, which I didn’t find endearing at all.
“I’d just exposed my soul to the most popular boy in school, and in return he’d given me silence.
Maybe I could persuade my mother to move towns again.”
What’s this secret that has her worried so much, you ask? She admits that sometimes she wonders if there’s more to life. Big deal. Everyone wonders that. Acting as though it’s an earth-shattering secret left me with no sympathy for River.
Not So Secret Secret Name
Now about River — River isn’t actually her name. What’s her real name? I wish I could tell you but I can’t because I. Don’t. Know. River is her “secret name” that she reveals to her newfound friend Summer Grace. Her real name is the one that remains a mystery. Not once is it mentioned in The Graces.
“It started in form room, while the teacher, Miss Franks, called attendance. She said my name.
[…]
Niral’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You mean River?’
[.…]
Miss Franks waited for me to say something, then cleared her throat. ‘Her name is not River, Niral.’”
There’s such great fuss over River’s name and yet I, the reader, couldn’t ascertain the gravity of the situation. It’s a farce that I didn’t even get to laugh about. Like, her classmates call her “new girl” and Fenrin opts for Alice once, referencing Wonderland along with words of Lewis Carroll, “curiouser and curiouser.”
Slight Improvement Towards the End
Things picked up a little towards the end with a few twists. Still they came way too late for me to care. I surely won’t be picking up the sequel to The Graces.
View Spoiler »
This book was the most incredible text I have ever read. reading the book, I can’t understand how anyone could possibly not like it. the twist at the end is heartbreaking and really makes you even more involved in the adventure that is Rivers life. I feel that another reason the book is so good is that the four main characters are so significant and relatable that it makes you feel like you are really connected to it. I feel connected to River so I interpret the book differently to someone who would feel connected to Fen, or Summer. After reading the book I reread it. After reading The Graces again it made more sense as I realised I had missed important information, weeks later when I was reading it for the third time I found more facts I had missed and the book made so much more sense. I think that possibly the reason some people didn’t love the book was because they had possibly missed information that was needed to understand the book better. I strongly recommend this book to everyone and everything and I am counting down the days for the sequel.
This is one of my favorite books. I don’t get why River being dramatic is such a problem.. it’s plot development. She’s dramatic to make the (spoilers) scene where they capture her and she brings Wolf back to life, make more sense. If she never gave them a reason to be aggravated, the final chapters would have never happened. Rivers name was also never revealed because she wanted to leave her former self behind. I think it’s pretty cool you don’t get to know her name until she wants you to, that way you’re getting to see the her she wants everyone else to see her and you get to know her the same way the Graces do. as River. And finally in response to it being compared to Twilight, the book is completely different. The most obvious being The Graces are witches.. not vampires. AND River AKA “new girl” is more powerful than all the Graces combined. Was Bella like that? No. She was a poor defenseless human, who fell for a vampire who just so happened to love her back. The love story is not that easy in the Graces. Fenrin and River never even hook up. She is just infatuated with him. All of them. And seeing how they live and the beautiful description of them.. I understand why. I loved this book and would recommend it.
I hate everyone here this book was amazing
I had to make a real effort to get to the end of this. River’s character is so pathetic in its craving for acceptance that the belated attempt to show her in a better light is a complete failure. The overload of adoration of ‘the Graces’, and her abject self-abnegation was boring, boring, boring.
Even though I suspect that the relentless hammering home of her negative self-esteem was supposed to highlight its negativity, there was no attempt to present an alternative. Bad book.
Oh no, I was hoping this would be good :( The obsession in particular has me very hesitant towards picking it up. That can get so frustrating to read.
I hope your next read(s) are better
I have heard some very mixed opinions on this book, others have loved it and you have hated it. I think it might be a case of I need to read this myself and form my own opinion saying that I think it’s a library borrow.
This one didn’t work for me either! I actually couldn’t finish it, so I’m kind of impressed by your perseverance… There was just something about the story that felt forced…. River (I’ve forgotten her given name too) and her obsession with the Graces really grated on me a lot- seriously, there’s interest and there’s unhealthy obsession, and she DEFINITELY crossed the line.
This sounds AWFUL. Thank you for saving me the trauma of reading it.
I am so sick and tired of reading negative portrayals of single moms. It might just be what I’m reading, but so often in YA they are either shown negatively or not at all. Whereas single dads are usually the sympathetic heroes. Ugh.