A Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray
403 pages
8.5 /10



this was a great book. well, it not like 'wow! its so good!' but theres something in it that keeps you reading til the end. my language teacher said she 'highly recommended' this book, so i read it. i usually get intimidated by books this long, but turns out, they're not that bad.
the book is about a girl named gemma. her mother dies in the beginning, and she is sent to spence, a girls boarding school, by her father and brother. her mother gave her a mysterious necklace with a picture of a cresent eye before she left. and yea, theres a meaning. the boarding school is mainly to make them as ladylike as possible, to prepare them for marriage. gemma does not make friends easily once she enters spence academy. that doesnt mean she's alone, though. there is a handsome young man who seems to be following her everywhere, trying to tell her something. he warns gemma to stops the thoughts of all her visions, and keep all magic within the magical realms or else...
gemma manages to communicate with her mother, after her death, and finds an interesting book - the secret diary of mary dowd. its full of secrets that gemma can truly relate to. but... whose mary dowd??
this was a good book, and it kept me reading. the climax wasnt until the last few pages. when i was almost done the book, i thought i had missed the climax somewhere in the middle. i asked my teacher, but she told me it was nearer to the end. so i was like - ooh. the way the author wrote was a little different from other authors. she often said stuff like: 'she pulled me over. squeezed me hard' - or something liek that instead of 'pulled me over and squeezed me hard' she doesnt use the article in the next action after it. i think it makes the actions seem quicker.
i really recommend this book.

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