A Great and Terrible Beauty

A Great and Terrible Beauty
Libba Bray
4 Stars
A good clean read. Interesting storyline and a plot that pulls the reader in. The first book of a trilogy, the story revolves around Gemma, a 16 year old. After she sees her mother’s murder in a vision she is sent to a boarding school in England. She fights against understanding the continuing visions, finding friends and girl cliques. I usually don’t enjoy mystical books, but this one fascinated me. The first half of the book wasn’t as interesting to me as the second half, but during the last 200 pages I couldn’t put the book down.

It was reccomended to me by one of my sisters, whom I had convinved to read Twilight, which she read in one day. It's part of a trilogy, so if you aren't ready to get sucked in then you might want to wait a while on this one. You will get sucked right in once you pick this up!

You can read more on the authors website. She is such a witty woman. She begins the acknowledgements in her second book with this: "Books do not write themselves. If they did, I'd have have a lot more time to spend at Target."

In a nutshell the book is: A Victorian boarding school story, a Gothic mansion mystery, a gossipy romp about a clique of girlfriends, and a dark other-worldly fantasy--jumble them all together and you have this complicated and unusual first novel.