A Great and Terrible Beauty

[library_mama]

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. Narrated by Josephine Bailey. This is the first in a very popular teen gothic trilogy. The year is 1895. Gemma Doyle is 16, no longer getting along with her beloved mother, and begging to be allowed to go to London, though she has spent all her life in India. Then her mother dies – and Gemma sees the violent events in a vision. Her father takes to opium and her grandmother sends her to finishing school at Spence. The girls are catty, she is followed by a mysterious and handsome young Indian telling her not to use her new powers, and she finds that her mother was a member of a secret magical Order. The women of the Order were responsible for controlling access to the Realms and bringing magic from them into the everyday world. But something that happened 20 years ago closed the Realms and scattered the Order. Gemma is the only one with the power to solve the mystery and right the world. She finds a secret diary, befriends three other girls without really trusting them, tries to figure out what she wants. Perhaps Gemma’s relative freedom in India gave her the perspective to rail against the many restrictions at boarding school, though her friends somewhat anachronistically seem equally frustrated by the roles they are expected to play. The story is told in Gemma’s voice, and all the action is subjected to the close scrutiny and deep analyzing so common to girls that age. This made for a slow story as I was listening to it in 15 minute chunks, even though the narrator was excellent at distinct voices for all the characters and a multitude of accents. I still couldn’t stop listening. And since only a few of the many storylines were resolved, the big bad only temporarily defeated, I’ll probably have to look up the sequels.