Cover retrieved from Goodreads
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Libba Bray
Simon and Schuster: 2003, 403 pages
Reviewed by Jessie Park
Sixteen year old Gemma Doyle lives in India with her mother and father, miffed at not being able to go back to London for her first season. Suddenly there is a horrible family tragedy and she is sent not only back to England but straight to Spence's Academy for Girls. It's the quintessential Victorian boarding school, focused on educating girls on how to be great wives, hostesses, and mothers. But Gemma isn't like the other girls; she has a secret, a power that she doesn't understand and doesn't know how to control. She tries to ignore it while she learns to navigate her new surroundings. Gemma tricks her way into the mean-girl clique consisting of power-hungry Felicity and Pippa, the most beautiful girl in the whole school, bringing along her roommate, Ann, the scholarship student who is constantly picked on. When the girls find a hidden diary of a long-ago student who shares the same powers that Gemma is experiencing, the foursome decides to try their hand at this new and unusual magic. Are they just having some fun they wouldn't ever be allowed to have in the real world or are they acting beyond their control? What is the price to pay for such pleasure? Readers should be aware that this is the first book in Bray's trilogy.
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