A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle Trilogy, #1)

by Libba Bray

It's 1895, and after the death of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's being followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls - and their foray into the spiritual world - lead to?

Reviewed by Angie on

4 of 5 stars

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YES!
+Mean Girls meets The Craft, guest starring Sylvia Brown, set in 1895.
+Visions which are really portals into another realm! Gemma can essentially cross to the other-side, which is a nice dream world where she can talk to her dead mother.
+A girls' boarding school complete with a closed off East Wing, missing class portraits, dead students, intriguing hidden diaries, and many more secrets.
+Frenemies to real friends?! I honestly didn't expect that. I thought these girls were going to continue to be awful, but they truly bond. Not to say it's all sunshine and rainbows, because...well, things get dark.

NO!
-Period-typical racism toward Romani people. They're always referred to as "Gypsies" and "heathens."

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 30 June, 2020: Finished reading
  • 30 June, 2020: Reviewed