By Colorado Kids Advisory Board member Cory Weinstein

Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Number of Pages: 403

A Great and Terrible Beauty is about an unruly, head-strong girl named Gemma Doyle. After living in India all of her 16 years, Gemma longed to see the thriving green fields of England that her grandma told magnificent stories about through her letters. Her mother, Victoria didn’t want her to go to England, and she told Gemma it wasn’t as lovely and docile as it seemed. One day Gemma and her mother were in the marketplace. An Indian man in a white traveling cloak said something to Victoria. Gemma’s mother told Gemma to go home. Gemma raced off into the maze of wares and trinkets. Soon, a sickening feeling came over her. She saw a black shadow coming towards her mother in a vision and the Indian man being killed by the blackness. Her mother grabbed the knife the Indian man dropped and plunged it into her body. Gemma ran back to the scene to see if her vision was true, and she was confronted by the Indian man’s brother. When she found her mother lying in a pool of blood she was distraught. Gemma sprawled on the ground and let out a desolate scream.

Two months later she found herself being taken to Spence, a very good English school with a reputation for turning out charming young ladies. There she met Felicity, a girl with a want for power, Pippa, a girl wanting a perfect husband but auctioned off by her parents, and Ann, a shy girl with a beautiful voice. At Spence, she was tortured with a class in French, fine posture, and etiquette. Gemma kept on being confronted by visions, but she wants them to stop, and she doesn’t even know why she is having them. After visiting caves in the woods in a vision, she finds a diary written by Mary Dowd, a girl who had the same powers and went to Spence 20 years before Gemma came. Soon, she found out about the Order, a group of women who used their powers and visions to influence the world around them. Is she part of the Order? Will her visions ever stop?

I found this book to be an excellent ploy of words and characters. The characters had real personalities and you can just glide along the book not having to think who’s who and what’s what. Everything is very clear-cut. This book promotes an exceptional blend of the mystical, past, and romance. I would suggest this book to junior and high school students because of the romance scenes. If you liked the Victorian side of A Great and Terrible Beauty you may like The New Girl and Daily Life in Victorian England. I would recommend Montmorency by Eleanor Updale and The Barbed Coil by J.V. Jones, if you liked the magical part of this book. (February, 2005)