A Great and Terrible Beauty

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray: I'm just going to write the book jacket thing and then add some, because I tried to tell Lorna what it was about and it was too complicated. So here goes: Gemma Doyle isn't like other girls. Girls with impeccable manners, who speak when spoken to, who remember their station, who dance with grace, and who lie back and think of England when it's required of them. No, sixteen-year-old Gemma is an island unto herself, sent to Spence Academy in London after tragedy strikes her family in India. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma finds her reception a chilly one. She's not completely alone, though....she's been followed by a mysterious young man, sent to warn her to close her mind against the visions. For it's at Spence that Gemma's power to attract the supernatural unfolds; there she becomes entangled with the school's most powerful girls and discovers her mother's connection to a shadowy, timeless group called the Order. It's there that her destiny waits...if only Gemma can believe in it. A Great and Terrible Beauty is a curl-up-under-the-covers kind of book...a vast canvas of rustling skirts and dancing shadows and things that go bump in the night. It's a vividly drawn portrait of the Victorian age, a time of strict morality and barely repressed sensuality, when girls were groomed for lives as a rich men's wives...and the story of a girl who saw another way.

So there you go. It's a mix of girl book, and fantasy. The four girls Gemma, Felicity, Ann, and Pippa each have their own wish; Gemma wants to figure herself out, she's the mysterious one, until she tells them about her visions and takes them all into her dream world in the Realms. Felicity is the popular girl, the head of the group, she wants power and love. Ann wants beauty, she's the ugly, unpopular girl that at first is only invited because she's Gemma's roommate, but later fits in just as much as the others. Pippa is the second in command type; before they have their foursome she's second to Felicity in popularness. She wants to marry because of love, but her parents are marrying her off to the typical rich old guy. So in this book, there's the girl struggles, and the magic. It's the same type as Harry Potter, magic and reality intermingled. I loved it and I really did curl up in bed with it! If I were to grade it I'd give it an A++ : ) Definitely check it out! Alright, that's all, love you guys, Dan