Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty
Author: Libba Bray
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Books
Pub Date: 2003
Read: Aug 2011
Source: Borders
Why: You know, I’ve always been attracted to this book because I love the title, the main character’s first name is Gemma (long story), and the novel is set at a boarding school (I am consistently sucked in by the boarding school setting), but I was put off because of the paranormal elements. But I decided to give in and I’m glad I finally did.
Fulfills Challenge? No
Review/Thoughts:
I can’t help but compare this book to Anna Godbersen’s The Luxe (reviewed here). Both novels feature female protagonists, with three supporting female characters. Both are part of longer series. Both are set at the turn of the 20th century. That’s where the similarities end, however, because Libba Bray succeeds where Anna Godbersen fails.
For starters, Libba Bray is a lot more concerned with introducing strong female characters. I’m not saying the girls go out and kick ass or slay vampires or whatever. That wouldn’t really be fitting for the time period and the social mores of the time. But these four girls are complex, with different motivations. Felicity wants power. Pippa wants true love. Ann wants beauty. And Gemma, our main character, wants to know/understand herself. Read: not every girl is entangled in some love affair, not every girl is interested in just finding a husband even though that’s the script of the time. A love interest for our heroine is introduced early on but doesn’t become a love interest until much later, and even then, Gemma is mostly attracted to him physically and isn’t sure how to reconcile these feelings with everything else just yet because she’s got more important things to worry about. There’s her ability to foresee the future and to enter the realms and what that entails. With great power comes great responsibility, you know how it goes.
Some drawbacks: 1) Gemma’s first vision is quite confusing to me, and while this may be in part because it’s also confusing to her, I was actually unaware she was having a vision at all. The scene just seemed chaotic. And I felt confused at some of her later visions as well. 2) like Godbersen, I don’t think Bray quite captured the manner of speaking for the time period, but again, it’s a YA novel, and I’m more willing to forgive it with Bray because she does other things well, such as fleshing out these young women so that they don’t all have the same motivations.
All in all this was pretty good, and I finally gave in and bought the next two installments at full price because I’m itching to find out how this storyline is going to develop.
Final Verdict: 
I read this book years ago and loved it… I didn’t read Luxe but a lot of the mystical-fairy YA books I had read were boring or had dumb endings, and really didn’t compare to Great and Terrible Beauty. I know I read the second book when it came out, but I either wasn’t into it enough to wait for the third or (more likely) I found myself in another series.