A Great and Terrible Beauty

By Libba Bray
2005, Random House

I enjoyed this book mainly for the fact that it manages to be set firmly in the British Victorian era, but still have a modern air and sensibility. The characters act in such a way that you could imagine them in your high school, twittering behind other girls’ backs, saying those comments that are the barbed non-compliments girls are so famous for. The story follows Gemma Doyle as she enters a girls academy after spending her first 15 years living in India. She’s quickly initiated into life in an all-girl environment and shows herself to be quite adept at holding her own.

The story is slow moving. You know that things have to happen, Gemma has newly discovered “powers” and there are good and evil influences all around her, but it gets tripped up on the setting and every day minutia of the life of a “proper wife in waiting”. This is the first book in a trilogy, but I’m going to have to wait until I have some serious time to devote to the second and third before I finish the story.