The Grace Year

It's been decades since I read Lord of the Flies, but at times this felt like a female version of that story. It is also reminiscent of The Power (which I started recently but never finished). Author Kim Liggett actually opens the book with quotes from Lord of the Flies and Handmaid's Tale. Booklist also ties the story line to The Hunger Games...so lots of young adult angsty stuff going on in this speculative fiction about a world where women are both deprived on any real power, but seen as so terrifying in their potential power that they are sent away for a year to rid themselves of their destructive magic and purify themselves. Many don't return, captured by poachers who sell their body parts to unscrupulous buyers seeking miracle cures. The ones who do seem permanently altered--and not in a good way. Sixteen-year-old Tiernay has never aspired to the role of wife/mother that is designated for the lucky women who are picked by a man prior to the Grace Year. She would prefer  to live out the life of those who are not selected, working in the fields or workhouses. But her childhood friend picks her at the selection ceremony and she feels betrayed. When the women are marched off into the woods and left at a crude compound, Tierney, with skills learned from a tomboyish childhood, tries to organize cleaning the filthy quarters and building rain barrels for fresh water instead of the murky green stuff that comes out of the camp's well. But she has a powerful enemy in the person of a young woman, Kiersten, who wanted to marry Tierney's betrothed. And that woman eventually turns the rest of the women against Tierney. How Tierney will survive on her own is the meat of the story.
Reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.