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Wanting to introduce my teen to the historical genre I decided to pick up this series for a nice mother/daughter buddy read. She read the physical book while I listened to the audiobook. Our plan was to knock out the entire trilogy one book after the other. But unfortunately that is not going to happen. This book was just too blah for the both of us. It took us almost a week to get through which is about 4 days too long. Neither one of us could really get into it plus there wasn't a single chara
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This is the oldest book on my TBR, and the PopSugar Challenge this year includes a category for that, so I finally got around to reading it. A friend recommend A Great and Terrible Beauty to me around the same time that several other books with strong female protagonists came out (I remember The Hunger Games being one), and said she liked this particular title best.
If I had read this book a decade ago, I might have been intrigued and really love this book. Now, several years removed from the cl ...more
If I had read this book a decade ago, I might have been intrigued and really love this book. Now, several years removed from the cl ...more
First in the Gemma Doyle trilogy.
Sixteen year old Gemma must leave her home in India after she sees her mother commit suicide in a mysterious vision. Gemma is sent off to a girls' boarding school in Victorian England, feeling guilty about her mother's death and ashamed of her father's drug addiction. As a proper British girl, she is, of course, not able to tell anyone the truth about her parents.
She eventually makes some friends at school and they explore a cave on the school grounds. They find ...more
Sixteen year old Gemma must leave her home in India after she sees her mother commit suicide in a mysterious vision. Gemma is sent off to a girls' boarding school in Victorian England, feeling guilty about her mother's death and ashamed of her father's drug addiction. As a proper British girl, she is, of course, not able to tell anyone the truth about her parents.
She eventually makes some friends at school and they explore a cave on the school grounds. They find ...more
I was unsure of what to expect of this YA novel with slight historical references and a gothic twist. The beginning had me wondering if all YA lit now involved moody, overly dramatic girls. (recent experience with this common YA literary character type shall remain nameless). Gemma did start to redeem herself in my mind a little, and her influence on her impressionable target audience seemed to improve as she went about her life. The attention to what life was like for girls of her day (being tr
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A YA fantasy set in Victorian times with a strong female heroine should have been right up my alley, but something was really lacking for me. Maybe it was that the heroine wasn't actually all that strong. I might have found her identifiable when I was actually a teenage girl myself, but as it was I was just kind of annoyed at the angst. I might read the sequel, because there are a couple of plot points I'm a little curious to see develop, but I really wasn't that crazy about this one. Not partic
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It was good, about a society of powerful women. Better if I was a teenager, but a good gothic vacation read
I had high hopes based on the description and then spent the summer stuck on page 26!
Great Victorian Gothic tale
Feb 20, 2008
Beth Given
marked it as to-read
Jul 09, 2008
Megan
marked it as to-read
Nov 08, 2011
Jen (NerdifiedJen)
marked it as to-read
Oct 10, 2012
Amanda
marked it as to-read
Aug 17, 2015
Stormnangel
marked it as to-read
Aug 30, 2015
Sarah
marked it as to-read
Aug 13, 2017
Pattie
marked it as to-read
Dec 10, 2017
Charlene
marked it as to-read
Feb 06, 2022
Krista
added it
May 29, 2024
Katie
marked it as to-read
