A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (2003)

It is not possible to read every book in the world and I will come no where near reading all the books that sound interesting to me - or even all the books on my night stand, so I let my reading be serendipitous. This is a great example. I was looking through a list of top 100 books for young adults, found I had read about a third of them, and came upon this one. It wasn't the title, cover or summary that grabbed me, but the name of the author - Libba Bray. What a name! Kind of like a stuttered "library."

I liked the premise - Gemma Doyle lives in India in 1895 with her family, but when her mother dies, ends up in a boarding school for young girls in England. Her roommate Ann is the scholarship student, shy and lacking self confidence. The "in" girls are Felicity and beautiful Pippa. But Gemma seems to have some latent magic powers and she draws these girls into a magical world, where they can be what they are not in the real world.

I enjoyed the reminder of how far women have made it. That at the end of the 19th century girls had little say about their fates and that they were educated to be graceful companions to men, learning to draw, dance, speak French. We get a glimpse of some of the teachers - women who do not have a husband and this is one of the few decent jobs for a single woman. I don't mind a bit of magic, but am not thrilled with stories that plunge headlong into strong magic realms where the good is too good to be true and the evil is really evil. Nor do I really want to read about young Gemma being warned not to mess with the magic, but of course she does anyway, without learning to control it. So not a waste of my time, but I do not need to finish the trilogy.