Pre-review: I want to read this book because I'd heard good things about it, but after reading this review, I'm not sure anymore.

Note: I read the Chinese translation of this book, and I'm not sure whether the translator had mistakenly make the Main Character (a young lady from the 1890s Victorian era) sound like an air-headed modern teenager, or was it Libba Bray's own fault for giving her own MC such kind of misplaced voice.

Actual review here:

I give this book a Nothing Special 1.5 stars

Well...A Great and Terrible Beauty isn't the worst book I've ever read, comparing with A Discovery of Witches (which I'm sure I'm going to Do Not Finish) it's highly enjoyable. It's a quick, easy read and it doesn't charge you too much brain cells, but I still won't recommend it to people who've already read a few paranormal YA novels before, because the story really is Nothing Special.

First, let me tell you I needed to keep telling myself to calm down when reading this book, and that's the only reason why I managed to avoid throwing a bitch fit during the reading process. Why? Here're a few reasons:

(1) The story begins with the MC arguing with her mother on the street of Bombay, India; an Indian colonial city at that time, and said MC had been behaving in an rather disrespectful manner toward the local people and her very own Indian housekeeper.

Well...I actually needed to put the book aside and take some deep breath and reminded myself the story is set in the 1890s, and it probably was common for the white people to feel superior toward the locals, but still...the MC had really been quite a bitch toward her housekeeper, whom she had known for most of her life and acted as the MC's caretaker.

I'm disgusted.

Plus, it goes without saying that once the MC left India behind, not once did the MC remember the housekeeper, not once.

Edited@27/02/2015: well, a helpful reviewer came up to say the MC, Gemma, did think of her Indian housekeeper for a few times, but I'm sorry, I really was unable to find it in the Chinese translation I read.

(2) Somehow, a British citizen who wasn't born with a single drop of Indian blood in her, and who also wasn't a Hinduist, had adopted Goddess Kali, the goddess of destruction, as her guardian goddess.

I'm disgusted, as an non-Hinduist, when I visited India some years ago, for more than once I wasn't allowed to come anywhere near some of the shrines within the temples, because those important shrines are for believers only. But it's okay for the MC, a non-Hinduist, to appoint Kali to be her guardian goddess!?

That's bullshit.

And said MC was referring Goddess Kali to an 'evil goddess'. I'm sorry!? In the Hindus myths, Kali drinks blood and she kills a lot of demons, but at the same time she's viewed as a great mother and protector of humankind. So she is definitely not evil! Ignorant Little White Girl, would you please not put your sticky fingers on the Hindus myth and a goddess you obviously know nothing about?

(3) There's also an Indian young man who serves as the love interest, I don't have much to say about him because he's only there to be the mysterious, handsome guy; but at least this guy is a shade better than what we had gotten in this godforsaken Tiger's Curse book.

(4) Last but not least, the MC had been a little bitch toward her mother.

I'm aware of the fact that girls from Victorian era probably weren't supposed to be worldly and knowledgeable about things outside of their families and their social circle, instead they were expected to be sheltered and naive in order to keep their 'innocence', but still.

Thankfully, the story moves from Bombay to London after Chapter 4 or so, but I'm still faced by other problems:

(5)There's magic, secret societies, demons(?) and otherworldly dimensions in the story, but the world building is as weak as what we had gotten from the Prophecy of the Sisters series by Michelle Zink. In another word: empty stupid make-believe.

(6) Once the MC arrived to the boarding school for young ladies, we get the complete Mean Girls treatment.

(7) Supposedly the MC befriended three other girls in the boarding school, but I can never believe those girls had shared deep enough friendship and trust to a point they agreed to keep an important secret together.

(8) School girls doing witchcraft in the boarding school. *facepalms* I know they were only 16 or so years old, but still.

(9)  After reunited with her dead mother in the otherworld, the MC continues to argue with her mother instead of listening to her advice. The MC never learns.

(10) The ending...bad things happened to the MC and her friends, and I'm not even sorry, instead I'm aloof and don't give a damn about whether those girls live or die. Why should I care when there had already been people forewarning the MC and her friends: "Don't do this! Don't go there! It's dangerous!" but they still do it anyway?

My suggestion: this book doesn't worth your hard-earned money, borrow it.

I'd catergorize this book as mystery/fantasy/young adult/comedy. The premise alone is amazing: it's a novel about magic, visions, and inter-realm travel, all set in a girls' boarding school in Victorian England. Sounds weird, but it's really good. Plus, Libba Bray is hilarious, and her writing is a good blend of humor and drama. The next two books in the trilogy, Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing, are equally amazing.

4'5 ★

vid rev will be available on October, 14, 2020 here https://youtu.be/6cOw7XYU5gU

I would've loved this when I was about thirteen and I'm gutted that I didn't come across it earlier. A Great and Terrible Beauty is a bit too explicitly Gothic for me, and for a fantasy it was frightfully unimaginative. It feels as though Libba Bray was relying entirely on the setting to render this in anyway dark or compelling - so maybe it's the gauzy plot I'm criticising.

The pacing is haphazard. The plot meanders aimlessly, dragging in the middle before accelerating at a dizzying speed towards the close. I couldn't keep up with the rushed finale - that, and it made no sense whatsoever. The ending itself was overwhelmingly underwhelming. Well, the whole story was just that: underwhelming. The impression I got was that Bray had thrown in various 'heavy' elements in an effort to add more dimension or scope, but these facets were never developed as they should have been; self-harm and sexual assault are treated flippantly and Bray neglects to explore the complexity of suicide, homophobia and racism, instead condoning these topics as the moral orthodoxy of the time.

The characters are flat and the clique were indistinguishable. I'm really not a fan of the heroine-who-hates-herself-for-something-that-very-obviously-wasn't-her-fault trope. I much prefer a protagonist who embraces their own strength. Gemma was impetuous and refused to take matters into her own hands so thank goodness Bray knows how to do witty comebacks. One other thing that I really appreciate is Bray didn't add the complication of an unnecessary love interest - although I disagree with the fact that the only sex appeal Gemma could identify in one potential candidate was his ethnicity, dubbed 'exotic'.

This was just a little sedate for me. I like wholesome melodrama and sadly bitchy rivalries alone just don't quite cut it.

Shall I tell you a story?
A new and terrible one?
A ghost story?
Are you ready?
Shall I begin?

Once upon a time there were four girls.


One was pretty.


One was clever.


One charming, and one…


One was mysterious.

But they were all damaged, you see.
Something not right about the lot of them.
Bad blood.
Big dreams.
Oh, I left that part out.
Sorry, that should have come before.
They were all dreamers, these girls.

One by one, night after night,the girls came together.
And they sinned.
Do you know what that sin was?



Their sin was that they believed.
Believed they could be different.
Special.
They believed they could change what they were—damaged, unloved.
Cast-off things.
They would be alive, adored,needed.
Necessary.
But it wasn't true.
This is a ghost story, remember?
A tragedy.



They were misled.
Betrayed by their own stupid hopes.
Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all.
So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see?
They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be.
What can't be.
There, now.
Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?

I bought this book because of the cover and the title, without even reading the description. I'm a shallow person like that :) But it turned out surprisingly well.

This book evoked some sweet nostalgia... No, I haven't attended a boarding school, but I used to LOVE movies about boarding schools for girls as a teen. I felt ten years younger reading it.

"A Great and Terrible Beauty" had everything I love: diaries, notes, Victorian setting, a boarding school for girls, mystery, friendship, great student-teacher relationship, references and parallels to literary classics. What can I say, it was my cup of tea :)

Written in the first person, it gave me a real connection to Gemma. The complicated relationship with her mother - the cycle of love, irritable bitchiness and guilt really resembled what I felt like as a teen.

Gemma is a strong person, someone I really respected as the plot unfolded. She stands up for herself and for others, even when it costs her. But she's not the perfect-heroically-charitable type. Does stupid stuff sometimes. She respects her opponents, and that makes it easier to see and manage deceit and hostility. The book isn't a superhero vs supervillain kind of thing. There's a lot of focus on friends/enemies dynamics in a closed group of girls, establishing oneself in a society, gaining respect, etc. The great enemy remained in the background, but I guess there will be more about that in the next books.

It wasn't romance-centric at all, which was awesome. I mean, there is a romantic interest, but friendship has a much more prominent place in the novel. No obsessive inner monologues about lovey-dovey here (finally!).

What I liked the most about this book was the fact that it wasn't centered around one character. Other girls are really distinguishable personalities, real, with wills and ambitions of their own. Each has their own voice. They aren't just sidekicks to shine more light on the narrator.

I wanted more exploration of Gemma's upbringing in India, the resulting cultural context and background weren't really there. In the next books, maybe?

After a long streak of YA disappointments, I didn't really expect to get into it much, thought that maybe the genre itself no longer works for me. This turned out to be a great comfort-read. Though it was by no means outstandingly brilliant or original, it was certainly very enjoyable. Already starting the second book :)

Boarding school for young ladies who might be married off to old rich men if their families get away with it find a way to escape into fairyland by getting drunk and discovering Sappho.

If you wanted a dark academia book with a cottagecore aesthetic, search no more.
I’m honestly ofended, can you believe this? So many lists of ‘’Dark Academia books you need to read!’’ Include a bunch of books that have nothing to do with academia at all, yet this one is in almost none of the lists? Your favorite classic with morals ge=rey characters is not a Dark Academia book just because you want it to be, Jeremy; this is!

Felicity my beloved.


Stop killing lesbians or you'll see what I'll do
3.5

4/5 stars

I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.

Something to listen to while reading this ♥

Trigger warnings for: Self harm, a rape joke, epileptic fits

Libba Bray never disappoints me, but what's new? When I picked this book up, my expectations were dark sky-high and my excitement as measurable as each small particle of dust in a haunted castle. Truth be told, this wasn't as good as the Diviners, as it followed some stereotypical YA cliches and widely-used tropes, but it was also feminist, and well-researched, gothic-inspired and full of slowly progressing friendships and various types of representation.

The story followed Gemma Doyle, a girl who just wanted to have an adventure, but instead got tangled in a world of grief, and power, and darkness, and so many other girls who wished to hold power in their hands in an era that suppressed them. There were various elements of mystery, and I loved the mythological aspects that were carefully woven in the story, like intricate lace designs. The writing was different from the Diviners, but it was just as historically accurate.

The atmosphere was absolutely stunning, and the all-girls finishing school Gemma went at made everything even better. One of the things this story is famous for is its mostly-female cast, and it was such a refreshing thing to see! The friendships here and the way girl-hate turned slowly into girls finding comfort in each other and pushing their differences away all made me incredibly happy and excited to meet them better. Truth be told, I started to feel close to them in the second book, but that same thing happened in the Diviners as well, so it didn't put me off very much.

One thing I can't say I liked was the romance. Gemma and Kartik both seemed quite preoccupied by their own problems, and their attraction felt forced, very allonormative and weird to me (it is very possible that this is just me, though). Speaking of, this book painted a very detailed picture of female sexuality, and of how women started to explore and voice their desires, despite the way Victorian era forced the "pure angel" stereotype.

In other parts of representation, I really liked the conversations on mental health in this story (that become even more prominent in the other two books), on grief, depression, trauma, addiction and moving on, finding happiness even in the darkness and having the people you love next to you. My favourite character was Gemma in this book, but as you will see in the rest of the books, my opinion will change xD In any case, overall, this was really enjoyable and I am really glad I read it ♥ I recommend for starters on historical fantasy ♥ Until the next review, stay magical ♥

~Mary ♥

DNF***

n  You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, it’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet...n

Libba Bray managed to combine all three components in A Great and Terrible Beauty which are a great premise, terrible characters and motivation behind their behavior and a beautiful writing. Unfortunately, no matter how great the premise was and how beautiful the writing is, terrible characters isn't the thing to joke about.

Not that I expected anything extraordinaire, since the premise sounds pretty ordinary — boarding school, mystery, group of girls — but the setting intrigued me. Girls at Spence are taught French, singing, art, but first of all they're taught how to be ladies, how to be the best wives for their future husbands. They're taught how to curtsy, how to cheer a man and when to keep their mouths shut. What else does a young girl in 1895 need to know? Finally arriving to London after so many years of tearful pleas, Gemma Doyle knows for sure that she doesn't want to be "a perfect wife". So when she finds a diary full of secrets and mysteries, she can't let it go without finding the truth about what really happened to her mother and to the enigmatic owner of the diary — Mary Dowd — and her new friends are willing to help her with it. But as they say, some truths are better left unknown.

n  “Can you really have an inner circle with only four people?” I ask, sounding braver than I feel. “Seems more like an inner square, doesn’t it?”n

So while the premise was great, the characters... not so much. I totally understood, diving into this book, that Gemma was 16 years old and we were all 16 y.o once. It might not be a very nice age when it comes to building relationships with your parents, and girls at Spence had even greater concerns — they're about to be married against their will — but I'm past that stage, so even though Gemma's immaturity, annoyance and rebelliousness made sense, I can't call her a relatable or even likable, nor can I apply these words to her so-called friends.
Ann is that one girl no one really notices, but whenever they have an opportunity, people laugh at her. Felicity is the typical "main-evil-mean-girl" from movies about high school that isn't dumb, on the opposite, is the very example of "class" and has some issues with one or both parents. Unlike Felicity, Pippa might not be the smartest one, but she's fashionable and people hang out with her. Now how these four ended up being friends is beyond my imagination (and, maybe, beyond Bray's too, since they just did at one point). Secrets do bring people together, but these four? I'm not sure I can even call it a "friendship", in the end they just looked like typical people who are stuck at one place and have to hang out together. You don't often see "bullies" hanging out with their "victims", so, maybe, that was an interesting approach, but all that bullshit that came with it didn't leave me impressed.

n  I haven’t the heart to tell her that Tom’s looking for a rich wife, probably a pretty one, too, and that she will never be able to compete. n

It's so nice of you, Gemma, to think so high of your friends. Are these the infamous british manners? I doubt it.

n  She’s diligently trying to add sepia shadows to her painting now, and it’s making her fruit look bruised and ugly. But I’m not going to tell her that.n

At one point she started to act too childish and mean, and Pippa started to bore me to death with her pouting face, so that left me with liking Felicity that actually evolved a little bit during the book.
On the bright side A Great and Terrible Beauty, thankfully, wasn't full of oh-so-encompassing-big-love, so at least I didn't have a pleasure of witnessing Gemma being a love-struck teenager in 1895.

n  “There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”n

A Great and Terrible Beauty wasn't shocking and didn't really have any "big reveals", but, maybe, that's because I felt kind of indifferent towards the book almost all the time. The pace suits the book: slowly unravelling all the secrets, it evenly tells the story without feeling dragging.
Gemma's mother being Mary Dowd was a nice touch, even though it wasn't surprising, but I really appreciated the gloominess of the ending. Libba Bray proves to be an author that doesn't "play safe" with her books and characters. After all Pippa was the best "candidate" for dying she was so whiny sometimes, honestly, considering her situation and the upcoming forced marriage. The execution of all those illusions/lies/betrayal could've been so much better, though, but it felt rather hurriedly done.

n  “We’re all damaged somehow.”n

As for the last, but not least, component of the book — the writing was beautiful. It was picturesque enough to capture the atmosphere, but wasn't overdone. No matter how slow some episodes might've been and how indifferent I was throughout the book, I didn't have a thought not to finish it.

Notwithstanding that I'm not going to finish this series, A Great and Terrible Beauty was a quite fast read that made me want to read more of the author's books. And, I hope, the content of Diviners will be as divine as the title suggests.

This series is one of my favorite. Reviewing it will not do it justice.

Bray creates a world of dreams, wonder and magic. With every thing beautiful, something dark, horrible and nightmarish comes forth. Because what is light without the contracting dark?

Not everything that comes from dreams, wonder and magic is good though. And not everything that is dark, horrible and nightmarish is bad. So what can you trust? The feeling in your gut? The pull towards your deepest desire? Is it truly worth it? Are the dark secrets that lay before you worth the power?

Gemma is going crazy. She saw her mother die, yet she wasn't in eye shot of her. She sees things.. sees people.. yet is it really crazy if it is actually happening?

She finally gets to go to London to finishing school where she meets three girls that lives will forever be altered by her own. These girls feel as if finishing school is rubbish and that there is more out there for themselves. Which they do indeed find out just what is out there for them.



She is followed by a man, Kartik, who believes her when she says she saw her mother's death. He tells her not to dig any deeper and to leave things alone.

But how can she when there's even a 01% chance that she will be able to see her mother again? Who is this creepy, gypsy-like guy anyway and why does he even believe her?

This book is full of magic. I am telling you, it is beautiful. It's woven so well that at some points you are like, "wait, why can't this happen to me?"

Bray has a way of getting you to love characters so much that you feel like you actually know the person. Then she may do something horrible to them. That's when you'll throw the book across the room, sit for about five seconds, and then run to pick it up and continue reading.

Or you'll be like me and read the end before you even are past chapter three because you can't handle anything. I advise against doing that. I'm not a good role model.

This series WILL, and I underline that with all my feeling, break your heart. It will break it so much that you can't pick it up again and read it until it's been seven years or more (example: me), but you won't regret a thing.



I love and hate you Libba Bray.

It was there, I was there, I picked it up and started reading it. And almost didn't stop even when my eyelids were growing heavier and heavier in the wee hours. On the first page, I noted the use of present tense, flipped back a hundred pages or so (it's a real book) and saw that it wasn't just for that section, shrugged, and kept going. It fits. I could learn to really like the present tense, I guess; here it suits the narrative, a young woman's thought processes as she navigates her completely changed world; it brings immediacy. (I'd better get used to it – this was at least the third book I've picked up this year, and another right after it.)

Reviews for this are all over the place – even more, I think, than is usual. One complaint I see quite a bit down there is that Gemma Doyle, Our Heroine, is not remotely a proper Victorian young lady. Well, no. She's not. She's sixteen, and believe me when I say from personal experience that sixteen sucks. Libba Bray says in the Q&A at the end of the book that, as I interpreted it, utter accuracy to the thought and speech patterns of the era were not the most important thing to her; the basic truth of the constrictions of the time period were. So – would Victorian maidens have sounded like these girls? Probably not. But do they sound like genuine girls, wounded and afraid and fighting their way through all the obstacles thrown up in front of them by an unfair universe? Yes.

We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.

Gemma has been brought up to the age of sixteen in India, where her father is serving. She is in fact turning sixteen on the day the first chapter describes, and she's not happy. She wants to go to England. She is tired of India, and longs for the homeland she's never known, and her mother's constant refusal to let her go home to school frustrate her into temper tantrums. As her mother walks with her and her maid to the home of a friend, where Gemma has cake and very dull conversation to look forward to, the argument crops up as usual, and – as is becoming usual for her – Gemma says some rather unforgivable things and storms off. Then things become weird. She finds herself lost, and in the confusion of the marketplace is beset by a terrible vision of a man being killed, of her mother taking her own life. And the vision turns out to be true.

Next thing she knows, Gemma is getting her wish, and is off to school in England. And to continue the theme of "be careful what you wish for", it's dreadful. The school is a huge, forbidding fortress, imposing on the outside and gloomy inside; the other girls range from the "in crowd" of evil pretties and their hangers on to Gemma's roommate, the scholarship student Ann, whose standing is not helped by her stutter. It's about the worst possible scenario of a boarding school barring physical mistreatment. Being new would have been hard on anyone in that situation. Being new and fresh to the country and still guilt-ridden and mourning her mother and still trying to figure out what's happening to her, along with never being possessed of the best social skills – this is Gemma's plight. It isn't pretty.

Remarkably, and partly through blackmail, she does wind up finding a circle of friends, of a sort. These are not, quite, the friends most young adult novels give their heroines. These are not the girlfriends with whom you'd make popcorn and watch chick flicks. These are the girlfriends who start up a vicious game of Truth or Dare which results in tears and possibly arrests.

But that's why they're there, these girls, in that school: no one wants them at home. They're in the way, and little enough is expected from them that any benefit they can gain from this dismal school will be to the good. Ann will be a companion or a governess. Lovely Felicity and Pippa will marry rather well – their looks will ensure that, and if they can pretend to draw and speak French so much the better. And Gemma? No one really ponders Gemma's future. She's slotted away for the time being, so that her brother can continue with his life as best he can while quietly dealing with their opium-addicted father, and what happens after will happen.

"Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were – damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story, remember? A tragedy. … They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. What can't be." Felicity's voice goes feathery thin. "There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?"

All of this makes the vein of magic that runs through the story all the more alluring. It gives access to another world which is everything they could ever want. Arrogant in their confidence that they know what they're doing, and desperate for a way to carry the wonder over into their miserable lives, they ignore all the warnings they've received. And of course the consequences are dire.

I liked it. The writing engaged me – I guess I'm over the present-tense phobia – and while I have no warm and fuzzy feelings about any of the characters I do appreciate the way they're drawn, and the mythical pseudo-Victorian world they inhabit. The theme is easy to sympathize with: There's got to be something better than this.

But… Hold on. To quote Robert Sean Leonard as Neil Perry, "Oh my." I hadn't quite caught the really really strong parallels to a certain film before this very moment (see spoiler below). Oh dear. This changes things, a little...

Dead Poets Society: Set in boarding school in which there is no one of the opposite gender, at all (though boys illicitly meet with girls at parties and such). Main characters Neil and Todd, part of larger loose group. Parents of main characters cold and not exactly caring, with plans to dispose of their offspring in ways that will be most advantageous to the family. Inspiring and provocative English teacher Mr. Keating who quotes poetry and encourages free thought. Students leave school grounds at night for secret club meetings – reviving a defunct club they've learned about. Neil defies parents and acts in a play, and has a moment of triumph, but it is short and he ultimately is punished with the threat of a military academy. Kills himself. Keating winds up the scapegoat blamed for the death and leaves the school in disgrace.

Great & Terrible Beauty: Set in boarding school in which there is no one of the opposite gender, at all (though at least one girl meets with a boy in the woods). Main characters Gemma, Pippa, and Felicity, part of larger loose group. Parents of main characters cold and not exactly caring (or dead), with plans to dispose of their offspring in ways that will be most advantageous to the family. Inspiring and provocative drawing teacher Miss Moore who quotes poetry and encourages free thought. Students leave school grounds at night for secret club meetings – reviving a defunct club they've learned about. Gemma defies just about everyone and does things with her magic; and Pippa defies her parents and tries to wriggle out of an odious engagement, and has a moment of triumph – but it is short and she is ultimately punished by having the wedding date moved up. Kills herself by insisting on remaining in magic world. Moore winds up the scapegoat blamed for the death and leaves the school in disgrace.

Um. I'm not sure how I feel about that.