A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
[Book #1- Gemma Doyle Trilogy]

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (March 22, 2005)
Paperback: 432 pages
Reading Level: Young Adult

Summary[from the book]:

Gemma Doyle isn't like other girls. Girls with impeccable manners, who speaks when spoken to, who remembers their station, and who will lie back and think of England when it's required of them.
No, sixteen-year-old Gemma is an island unto herself, sent to the 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 a chilly reception.But she's not completely alone...she's been followed by a mysterious young man, who warns 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 group called the Order. It's there that her destiny waits...if only she 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 vividly drawn portrait of the Victorian age, when girls were groomed for lives as rich men's wives...and the story of a girl who saw another way.

Review:
This book was really really hard to get into. I thought I wasn't going to like it at first. I didn't really get into it until a few chapters in, truthly. I picked the moment to get into it while I was laying on a float in my pool, go figure! It's funny now that I look back on it. I was laying on a float in the pool and I was on the far side of my pool under the shade of one of the palm trees in my backyard and I had my right leg over the side of the pool on the desk, and my elbow on the side of the pool as well, holding myself there so I wouldn't float away. And a lizard[Anole] came up to me and had his little paw on my arm and I didn't even notice; I was so into the book. It was jsut sitting there, staring at me, and then it's tail hit me. I looked over and flipped out. I screamed and fell off the float, barely managing to save my book. It got a little wet and you can tell it got wet if you look close enough. But it's okay! Thank god!
I really loved this book. :) It was awesome. It's funny how some of the books that take you a very long time to get into, can become one of your top favorite books.
I'm currently reading Rebel Angels now. The second book to the trilogy. I'm a bit sad that Pip decided to stay in the other world, causing her real body to die in the regular world; human world. Even though I hated her guts at the beginning, along with Felicity's. I can't wait to see if Gemma's feelings toward Kartik grows stronger. I really really hope he likes her back! :)

Rating:
10/10



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