A Great and Terrible Beauty (The Gemma Doyle Trilogy) | Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty (The Gemma Doyle Trilogy) | Libba Bray | Victorian YA with fairies and a social heart

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A Great and Terrib...

	A Great and Terrible Beauty (The Gemma Doyle Trilogy) Libba Bray Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2005 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 300 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

You Will NOT Want To Put This Book Down!

This book was amazing from start to finish! I'm on the third book and I'm still clutching it!

Victorian YA with fairies and a social heart

It's aimed at a young adult audience. The premise was a little shaky: 16 year old Gemma Doyle is sent to a girls' boarding school in late Victorian England after the mysterious death of her mother. Gemma is showing signs of magical prowess, but she's been threatened not to use it by the enigmatic Kartik, a 17 year old handsome (of course) Indian man. Gemma runs afoul of the popular girls clique at the school and then makes her way into it through blackmail, all the while trying to solve the mystery of her mother's death and figure out what's going on with her visions. There weren't a lot of period details, but the few were solid: a description of London streets as an Impressionist painting: yellow streetlights, smudgy grey sky, black umbrellas. Bray did a good job with her descriptions (except for the girls' school uniforms, I just couldn't picture them). What Bray really excelled at was showing how these young girls were all at the mercy of their parents' whims. Felicity was abandoned by her capricious parents. Pippa was being married to a man older than her father to pay off the family debts. Ann is an orphan of no family fortune so is being trained to be a governess with no prospects of her own. All of the girls have their own heartaches and secrets that through sharing strengthens the relationship among them. But in the end, they are chattel, worth only their virginity and expected to obey without question. The supernatural aspects of the book are less compelling than the social issues. Gemma does behave erratically, but as the mother of two teenagers, I find that completely normal! Ultimately, I give the book four stars. It doesn't completely succeed at its aims, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless.

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OK not Great but not Terrible

While this was an easy and enjoyable read, it was not an all engrossing read either. I had a hard time getting past the the present tense writing, somehow it just seemed stiff and awkward. The story was ok, a little predictable but I will read the sequel.

could have been better

After reading the first book it was good enough to keep reading the other books although I didn't love it. I really liked the second book, but after the whole series was finished I was rather disappointed. I thought the story was compelling, but if you're looking for a book appropriate for you teenage girls this is not it. There are far too many points of view that if you call yourself Christian you will probably have a problem with. I really wanted to like these books, but after the insertion on homosexuality (hinted at in the first book, and is clear in the third book) it felt like another way so many are trying to instill homsexualtiy tolerance. I don't believe in persecuting homosexuals but I do believe it is wrong. So much is currently being done to try and change public opinion especially in hollywood to homosexuality and I find that this book ads to that sentiment. If you feel homosexuality is wrong I would not recommend this book especially to your teenagers. There are also some pretty dark moments in the book that I thought too heavy for teenagers. If you take these things out I would have liked the books far better.

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