A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1) in The Mysterious Reading Society

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Dec 09, 2010 Meann rated it liked it

Shelves: owned

A Great and Terrible Beauty was a bit challenging for me, to be honest, because I couldn't get past the first few chapters after several re-reads. This rarely happens to me, especially with YA books. This isn't to say those chapters were awful; they just didn't pull me in as easily as other books have done. But once Kartik came on to the scene, it was smooth sailing from there. ;P

AGATB is a decent intro to the series--Bray fleshes the characters out well enough. I'm disappointed that she didn't A Great and Terrible Beauty was a bit challenging for me, to be honest, because I couldn't get past the first few chapters after several re-reads. This rarely happens to me, especially with YA books. This isn't to say those chapters were awful; they just didn't pull me in as easily as other books have done. But once Kartik came on to the scene, it was smooth sailing from there. ;P

AGATB is a decent intro to the series--Bray fleshes the characters out well enough. I'm disappointed that she didn't do the same for the mythology, which, I suppose, will be rectified in the other 2 books. This makes the fantasy part unsatisfying, though. I think that it could've been epic, but it was more like a cozy, enclosed kind of fantasy to me, something that felt like The Craft in an A Midsummer Night's Dream setting.

Gemma is interesting, and she certainly lives up to all the "She's no Bella" hype I've been hearing and reading about. Of course, that doesn't mean she's the perfect heroine, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt for now. Her "friends" (quotation marks intentional) are annoying, as are most of the students in Spence Academy. But then again, they're teenagers.

But although the setting is definitely Victorian, I didn't feel like the girls acted "in period"; their sensibilities were very modern. While it will probably be explained away as "that's what makes them unique", I felt that they could've been written differently so that they will stand out but remain "in period". How? I'm not sure... I guess that's why I'm a published author only in an alternate universe. :p

The plot takes a while to develop. It's easy enough to follow, but was a tad too predictable. I suspected Mary Dowd's real identity early on, and also had a couple other early suspicions turn out to be correct.

The narrator's voice falls into one of my literary pet peeves: present tense first person narration. I always get jarred by this kind of style because my brain keeps trying to figure out how someone can go through all that is happening in the story while talking about it / writing about it. But that's more of a very personal bias than anything else. There were also times when the narrator felt more omniscient than she should be, especially when she describes certain actions that she does.

I'm still willing to give the next 2 books a shot because the story was engaging enough despite my problems with it. And also, there's Kartik. (But, oh my Maker, the stereotypes!) ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Leia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

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Feb 21, 2011 Claire rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, owned-paperback

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