Book Reviews - A Great and Terrible Beauty
Since I have only just found Jennifer Lynn Barnes's awesome ARC competition and have (oh, god) about 12 hours to enter, today has suddenly become a day of book reviews. Which is good, actually, because I've been meaning to do book reviews for a while now.
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
This book ingeniously taps into what I firmly believe are three of the most attractive prospects in children's and young adult literature:
1. magic
2. boarding school
3. corsets (and other ornate costuming - see the reason for the success of The Luxe.)
AGaTB is more than the sum of its parts, however. Gemma and her new friends Felicity, Ann and Pippa could easily be modern-day teenagers, and despite the unfamiliar Victorian setting Libba Bray manages to make the societal pressures each of the girls face easily relatable.
The freedom of the magical world the girls discover contrasts brilliantly with the restrictiveness of Victorian London, serving to make both settings incredibly detailed and interesting.
The plot contains twists I never saw coming, the ending very nearly made me cry, and I challenge anyone to be able to read this book without developing a fearsome girlcrush on Felicity Worthington.
I’m clearly doing a horrible job of doing the awesomeness of this book justice, so I have one final piece of evidence. When I lent my copy to Serena I was informed that I needed to order myself another copy, because she was never giving mine back.
EDIT: And then I read the terms of Jennifer Lynn Barnes's competition properly and realised that she stipulated that it was only open to the US and Canada. Damn. But my review still stands.
EDIT II: Found a way around it. Yay!!!!!!!