A Great and Terrible Beauty

This book was a great and terrible read that takes place in the great and terrible Victorian era where a sixteen-year-old girl living in India with her family witnesses the murder of her mother and is shipped off to England to attend a finishing school where she learns that she has great and terrible powers and learns great and terrible secrets about her mother's past and the goings on at that school. Sensing a theme here? I read that "A Great and Terrible Beauty" by Libba Bray was amazing and awesome and I should read it right away. So I did. It was pretty good. I like how the main character, Gemma, gets the better of the snobby girls at her school. I like how the mysterious young man who follows her from India keeps popping up. But the supernatural element of it was kind of unsatisfying. I expected something different, I guess, when one reviewer said that it was like a Victorian "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It wasn't really and I kind of was excited about it being like "Buffy". Goes to show you shouldn't read reviews, I guess.

I'll probably read the other two books, "Rebel Angels" and "The Sweet Far Thing" because I'd like to see what happens with the characters, but not before some other books on my pile of to-be-read. Now that I think about it, "Beauty" was a lot like "Twilight" so if you liked that series, you'll probably like this one. Not exactly the same, but definitely the same genre. Give it a try.