Author: Libba Bray
Pages: 403
This book is like a half-mystery, half-fantasy novel. It starts our normally with a British girl, Gemma, and her family living in India. All Gemma's life, she dreams of finally seeing England. She periodically has fights with her mom, and one day, when they are walking down the streets together, she runs away but then has this vision of her mother being murdered. Her vision was true, and her mother had died. She goes to England with her father and is sent to boarding school, where she begins to uncover deep and dark mysteries about her mother. Gemma learns that her mother was once part of this order and that she had found a way to the Realms with her friend, Sarah. Sarah had gone wrong and had offered up a sacrifice, tethering herself to a monstrous spirit. Gemma also takes her friends to the Realms, where all their dreams come true. She sees her mother again, one of her friends finds true love, and another becomes beautiful. However, as time goes on, she realizes that she and her friends opened up the Realms to the monster whom Sarah had become, and that they and everyone else are in danger. The book then follows Gemma's attempts to stop her friends from entering the realms, and then her final battle with Circe, the monster.
This book was good, but some parts of it did not make sense. For example, when Gemma went to the boarding school, two very popular girls were mean and cruel and always taunting another girl (Gemma's new roommate) for being ugly. Somehow, Gemma ends up growing to be friends with these two girls, and creating a new clique where she, the two popular girls, and the ugly one, are all best friends. This did not make sense to me, because she had detested the popular ones. That she would want to be friends with them was very out of the blue. Also, the title, "A Great and Terrible Beauty" did not make sense to me, until I realized that it might be referring to the Realms. They were beautiful - like paradise, but they were also terrible, as using their power could open them to Circe. All in all, it was a very good book, and I would give it a 4/5.
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