REVIEW: A Great & Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Title: A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)

Author: Libba Bray
Genre: YA Paranormal/Fantasy Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Release Date: December 9/2003

Acquired: Purchased Used

Goodreads: ADD

Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository

It’s 1895, and after the suicide 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 been 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?

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In India, this book started out beautifully, just pure descriptive magic. I wish everyone just stayed their butts there. Side note: I am extremely partial to backdrops in France and/or India-so I may be a smidgeon biased. Gemma is witness to a horrific scene involving her mother, a scene that, to her dismay, she foresaw literally minutes before it occurred. She is then promptly shipped off to a boarding school in England.

This is where the problems arose for me, and where the story began to grow a little stale. So much so, that I would put the book down for days on end, only to finally pick it up again and realize that ughh, maybe I shouldn't have. I think the change of scenery had a large impact on my loss of interest. England seemed so drab and void of the colour, smells, and culture that India provided in the beginning (though I have previously enjoyed stories based in England, this one was just dull to me).

However, there was a bright light at the end of that gray tunnel. The story picked up considerably as Gemma formed a stronger bond with a few of her classmates. The secondary characters-Ann, Felicity, and Pippa-also become increasingly more interesting as I became more informed of their lives, and the reasons for their reactions and interests. I think Libba Bray did a good job of making that transition easy and seamless for her readers: the fact that Gemma bumped heads with these girls initially, but then grew closer to them. I felt like it was done smartly, and not so quickly that it felt forced.

The 2 redeeming things in this book for me were these:
  
1) The interaction between Gemma and Kartik. I waited with baited breath for them to be in the same place at the same time, and I severely hope they have more scenes together in the next 2 books!
2)  The paranormal aspect. I think the intricacies and explanations were well thought-out and fun. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out from here-I'm expecting a lot more of it in Rebel Angels.

Overall, this book was extremely slow-paced for me, and when it finally did pick up, the excitement was still a little too few and far between. The characters were pretty one dimensional, and I probably could have done without a few of them. I really, really wanted to like this series-I saw SO many positive reviews for it. Hopefully, my feelings change with the other books.