crislee4969's review against another edition
5.0
Read this book in 2 days. Easy read because you cannot put it down!
lehine's review against another edition
5.0
I read it as a teen but it holds up as an adult. Some of the best YA I’ve read. Gemma starts out as a brat who quickly learns that things could be, and are, worse. The relationships between the girls are realistic for teens, and the feminist message is strong, despite the cover indicating it’s a bodice ripper (it’s nothing close). The world building is intoxicating.
allbookedup_'s review against another edition
3.0
You need to take this book for what it is and not try to put on airs when reading it. It’s a young adult novel and it’s written for a young adult audience. Once you understand and accept that’s what you’re reading and that’s what type of book it is it turns out to be a good story.
Gemma and her group of boarding school friends are relatable to almost every type of girl out there; there is a character for everyone. Their sense of adventure and the discoveries that they make up on the way shows them growing up in the time; this is a piece of historical fiction (which I should have mentioned in the opening statement). Gemma is also dealing with the death of her mother and the realization that her one dream of coming to London isn’t as grand as she imagined. Also she just turned sixteen and the world as she knows it is changing along with her.
The book is a light easy read but it has you turning page after until you’re looking at page 400 wondering where the book went.
Gemma and her group of boarding school friends are relatable to almost every type of girl out there; there is a character for everyone. Their sense of adventure and the discoveries that they make up on the way shows them growing up in the time; this is a piece of historical fiction (which I should have mentioned in the opening statement). Gemma is also dealing with the death of her mother and the realization that her one dream of coming to London isn’t as grand as she imagined. Also she just turned sixteen and the world as she knows it is changing along with her.
The book is a light easy read but it has you turning page after until you’re looking at page 400 wondering where the book went.
kandicez's review against another edition
3.0
If I was giving stars based on characters, this would be a five star book. I loved Gemma, and really liked the other 3 girls in the inner circle. They were very real to me. When characters are presented as flawed, like real people, it's so much easier to relate to them. I can't wait to find out more about Felicity, Ann and Gemma.
The reason for three stars instead of five, is that no detail was given about the realms. We were given glimpses, but no explanations. WHATSOEVER. I guess I should just be happy there's a next book, and hope for an explanation of sorts there, but I don't think you should have to wait for the next book for the next installment for every glimmer of understanding. All three in the series are already written, so I don't have to wait if I don't want to, but if I had read this when it was first released, I would have been very disappointed. There's a difference between waiting for what's going to happen next, and waiting to understand what's already happened.
The reason for three stars instead of five, is that no detail was given about the realms. We were given glimpses, but no explanations. WHATSOEVER. I guess I should just be happy there's a next book, and hope for an explanation of sorts there, but I don't think you should have to wait for the next book for the next installment for every glimmer of understanding. All three in the series are already written, so I don't have to wait if I don't want to, but if I had read this when it was first released, I would have been very disappointed. There's a difference between waiting for what's going to happen next, and waiting to understand what's already happened.
elizabethide's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
4.0
I remember loving this in middle school and although it starts a little slow it was definitely worth the reread!
“But forgiveness… I'll hold on to that
“But forgiveness… I'll hold on to that
fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.“
kaylamolander's review against another edition
5.0
I've been rereading a lot of my favorite books from when I was a kid, and most of them have lost their sparkle now that I'm an adult. This is the exception. I think I got so much more out of this book as an adult. I think I missed a lot as a teen. I loved it. It was beautiful, insightful, and challenging (on a YA level). I listened to the audio book and it was fantastic. Can't wait to reread the rest of the trilogy. I don't remember those ones as clearly.
kristinconnolly's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
booksforbrooks's review against another edition
4.0
Although it seemed to take the first 25% of the book to really get going, the rest of the story was nicely engrossing with some decent plot twists and likeable characters. I came for the Victorian, but I very much enjoyed the supernatural aspect too (not a normal genre for me) and will look forward to reading the other books in the trilogy.
ladypalutena's review against another edition
3.0
Gemma Doyle tries the patience of everyone around her. In the beginning of the novel, she’s in India with her family. They’re British, so there’s a very specific set of rules they have when interacting with the “locals.” (Oh, and they do fetishize the character of Indian descent in the novel as being “exotic,” which is a terrible thing to do.)
Gemma’s mother commits suicide right in front of Gemma’s eyes during a trip to the market, and Gemma gets shipped off to an English Finishing School outside of London, The Spence Academy. It is hoped that she will be tamed while she is there, because like most other YA period books, she’s a firecracker of a girl who doesn’t want to fit into the normal social conventions of the time.
This book is narrated in first person, in the present tense, and I’ll have to admit I’m not a fan of present-tense narrations. Some people think it ups the tension factor, because you’re living in the moment with the character, but if the person is narrating it in first person…then the narrator is obviously going to survive, right? If they were narrating it from the ghost world or something, they would have to do it in past tense. But enough about my preferences for narration choices.
A Great & Terrible Beauty is relatively well-written, and Bray has gone through the trouble of not sticking to Victorian dialogue, although her attempts at modernizing the Victorian period through feminism almost fall flat. One of the four main girls gets drawn into an arranged marriage and while that’s certainly not okay, everyone is perfectly fine with fat-shaming one of the other main characters. The more I reread this book, the weirder these parts of it are. I appreciate Bray attempting to bring feminism into 1899, when this book takes place, but her attempts are not standard throughout the novel and she really does leave several characters out to dry.
It’s relatively easy to guess the identities of Mary Dowd and her friend, Sarah, if you pay attention from the very first, so the plot’s biggest twist really depends on how much attention you’ve given the novel so far. I will admit that the first time I read it, I guessed at least one person’s identity, but had no idea as to the second. If you know anything about the rules of magic, it’s also relatively easy to guess what happened to Carolina, the little Gypsy girl who has been missing for about twenty years.
The characters in the novel seem like a hit or a miss. I feel like I’m getting too old to read YA books because the main characters in them are starting to annoy me. Gemma is 16 in the novel, as are her friends, and they behave like normal 16 year olds do, which is to say, annoyingly. They fawn over guys and wonder what’s going to happen to them after they get out of the finishing school (well, everyone except Ann, because she’s going to end up as a governess because she’s poor and here only on scholarship) and don’t put any attention into what is going on around them. It’s your typical YA stuff, and it’s all starting to get to me. The characters are petty and selfish, and even though they supposedly grow to like each other towards the end of the novel, I find it hard to believe that people who behave like they do towards one another can become friends.
As mentioned before, the book does a lot of sexualizing of the Indian character, Kartik, and Gemma often has wet dreams about him, fantasizing about his appearance and what she would like him to do to her. (He’s also the only guy she’s ever interacted with outside of her brother, so of course he’s mysterious and lustable.) The Romani “Gypsy” characters are also stereotyped, with the males being aggressive and overtly sexual and the women generally disappearing into the background.
I do want to say that I first read this book when I was around 14, and I thought it was one of the greatest books I’d ever read. The older I got, and the more books I read, the more flaws I’ve seen in this one. If you’ve never read a magical genre book before (with the whole “good vs. evil” trope in it), then you might find this a refreshing take, with it being set in a boarding school. If you’ve read female boarding school books before, then this one probably isn’t going to change your opinion on things very much. If this is your first time reading this novel, you may find it entertaining. If you read it when you were younger and enjoyed it, and you’re thinking about rereading it, I’d say go ahead and do it, but be aware that the book you remember isn’t as great as you remember it to be.
If you are a fan of pseudo-female-empowerment, like reading about girls being catty to one another, and you enjoy magic, I’d put this series at a 3.5/5. It will grab you if you’re interested in the genre, but other than that, it’s probably not going to do much for you. It treads well-worn genre conventions, and does not stray very far out of them. If you’re not a fan of magic/fantasy/female boarding schools, your mind probably won’t be changed by this novel. The good thing is, this is a relatively short read, so you won’t be bored for very long.
The Gemma Doyle trilogy is very similar to Inkheart in that the first book in the series is the best. While it does end of a sort of cliffhanger, had Libba Bray decided to not write a sequel, the world would have been more or less the same. Instead, we get forced romances in the continuing books, along with a half-hearted attempt to bring feminism to the world of 1900 London. There’s nothing here that you wouldn’t have seen before, just with some different faces in the main roles. Names have been changed, roles may have been reversed, but the stale genre tropes are still fully here.
Gemma’s mother commits suicide right in front of Gemma’s eyes during a trip to the market, and Gemma gets shipped off to an English Finishing School outside of London, The Spence Academy. It is hoped that she will be tamed while she is there, because like most other YA period books, she’s a firecracker of a girl who doesn’t want to fit into the normal social conventions of the time.
This book is narrated in first person, in the present tense, and I’ll have to admit I’m not a fan of present-tense narrations. Some people think it ups the tension factor, because you’re living in the moment with the character, but if the person is narrating it in first person…then the narrator is obviously going to survive, right? If they were narrating it from the ghost world or something, they would have to do it in past tense. But enough about my preferences for narration choices.
A Great & Terrible Beauty is relatively well-written, and Bray has gone through the trouble of not sticking to Victorian dialogue, although her attempts at modernizing the Victorian period through feminism almost fall flat. One of the four main girls gets drawn into an arranged marriage and while that’s certainly not okay, everyone is perfectly fine with fat-shaming one of the other main characters. The more I reread this book, the weirder these parts of it are. I appreciate Bray attempting to bring feminism into 1899, when this book takes place, but her attempts are not standard throughout the novel and she really does leave several characters out to dry.
It’s relatively easy to guess the identities of Mary Dowd and her friend, Sarah, if you pay attention from the very first, so the plot’s biggest twist really depends on how much attention you’ve given the novel so far. I will admit that the first time I read it, I guessed at least one person’s identity, but had no idea as to the second. If you know anything about the rules of magic, it’s also relatively easy to guess what happened to Carolina, the little Gypsy girl who has been missing for about twenty years.
The characters in the novel seem like a hit or a miss. I feel like I’m getting too old to read YA books because the main characters in them are starting to annoy me. Gemma is 16 in the novel, as are her friends, and they behave like normal 16 year olds do, which is to say, annoyingly. They fawn over guys and wonder what’s going to happen to them after they get out of the finishing school (well, everyone except Ann, because she’s going to end up as a governess because she’s poor and here only on scholarship) and don’t put any attention into what is going on around them. It’s your typical YA stuff, and it’s all starting to get to me. The characters are petty and selfish, and even though they supposedly grow to like each other towards the end of the novel, I find it hard to believe that people who behave like they do towards one another can become friends.
As mentioned before, the book does a lot of sexualizing of the Indian character, Kartik, and Gemma often has wet dreams about him, fantasizing about his appearance and what she would like him to do to her. (He’s also the only guy she’s ever interacted with outside of her brother, so of course he’s mysterious and lustable.) The Romani “Gypsy” characters are also stereotyped, with the males being aggressive and overtly sexual and the women generally disappearing into the background.
I do want to say that I first read this book when I was around 14, and I thought it was one of the greatest books I’d ever read. The older I got, and the more books I read, the more flaws I’ve seen in this one. If you’ve never read a magical genre book before (with the whole “good vs. evil” trope in it), then you might find this a refreshing take, with it being set in a boarding school. If you’ve read female boarding school books before, then this one probably isn’t going to change your opinion on things very much. If this is your first time reading this novel, you may find it entertaining. If you read it when you were younger and enjoyed it, and you’re thinking about rereading it, I’d say go ahead and do it, but be aware that the book you remember isn’t as great as you remember it to be.
If you are a fan of pseudo-female-empowerment, like reading about girls being catty to one another, and you enjoy magic, I’d put this series at a 3.5/5. It will grab you if you’re interested in the genre, but other than that, it’s probably not going to do much for you. It treads well-worn genre conventions, and does not stray very far out of them. If you’re not a fan of magic/fantasy/female boarding schools, your mind probably won’t be changed by this novel. The good thing is, this is a relatively short read, so you won’t be bored for very long.
The Gemma Doyle trilogy is very similar to Inkheart in that the first book in the series is the best. While it does end of a sort of cliffhanger, had Libba Bray decided to not write a sequel, the world would have been more or less the same. Instead, we get forced romances in the continuing books, along with a half-hearted attempt to bring feminism to the world of 1900 London. There’s nothing here that you wouldn’t have seen before, just with some different faces in the main roles. Names have been changed, roles may have been reversed, but the stale genre tropes are still fully here.