Essay on "A Great and Terrible Beauty"

Reading Response— September 25th, 2006

Dear Mrs. Rainwater,

When I saw the cover of A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray, I was completely intrigued. I don’t know what it was, the dark red background maybe, or the girl on the cover who looked as though she had a great and terrible beauty and a great and terrible secret. Whatever it was that caught my eye, I couldn’t help but reading this book first for my readers response, and not just 100 pages, I read all of it.
However, if I was expecting something wonderful out of this book, I was mistaken. Alright, I’ll admit some part of the book were pretty good, and that book as a whole couldn’t have been half bad, if I read all of it, could it? The first two chapters were very good, and kind of set the readers up for a dark and intense horror novel, but as the story progressed, it turned more and more into a cute little story about four best friend who formed a secret society and gossip and drink whisky at their meetings. This book could have gone either way, and it seemed as though the author couldn’t make up her mind and the story came out as a mixture of the two; not a good combination. As I have read many, many books in my fourteen years and have become quite a good book critic, I immediately got the impression that Libba Bray seemed to have her priorities in her story mixed up.
I thought she did a good job with her main character, Gemma Doyle, but kind of restricted her a little too much; she could have come out a lot more rebellious. In a world were money and social status ruled over intelligence and individual talents, Gemma, with her middle-class family and terrible secret, is completely lost. After she has the vision of her mother dying, naturally she blames herself when she finds her mother dead. Gemma is sent off to Spence boarding school in London. This is where the story takes, in my opinion, an unpleasant turn; Gemma tries to make friends. I personally feel that Libba Bray should have stuck to her original picture of Gemma being a rebellious loner who doesn’t need friends, and is to guilty about her mother’s death that she finds it hard to even interact with other people. From then on, the book is centered around the girls friendship and the mystery of the witches Order they discover, and the realms. . . . OK, getting off topic, back to the characters. The first friend Gemma makes at school is Anne, her roommate. Anne is described at one point during the book as the smart one in their group. I can not disagree with this analysis more. She may be book smart and goos in the area of memorizing pointless fact about the french language, but she has no opinions, no thoughts of her own. She is very insecure, and will do almost anything to be accepted by the upper-class, popular girls. Her greatest dream is to be beautiful. Felicity is, probably Gemma’s best friend. She is the opposite of Anne, very confident, opinionated, beautiful, rebellious, and power hungry. This last aspect is what causes the death of Pippa and Gemma’s final battle with the evil witch, Circe. Pippa is the other girl in their foursome. She is gorgeous, described as the loveliest girl Gemma had ever seen. Although she has dark hair, I kind of think of her as the “dumb blond” in their group. Though she claims to hate being pretty, she sets to much store by beauty, and at the beginning, this influences her opinions of Anne. She comes across much more snobby and rich than she actually is, she just doesn’t know how to think before she speaks. Her dreams is to find true love, not just men that flock to her because of her looks.
The book kind of reminds me of the early chapters of Evil Star, by Anthony Horowitz. Matt has to go to a completely normal school, even though he has the power of the Gatekeepers, and can sense danger before it comes. Naturally the other students think he’s some kind of freak and keep him an outcast until he quits. I guess I was hoping A Great and Terrible Beauty would be more like Evil Star, I’m a big fan of Anthony Horowitz.
One of the main things that confused me about the book was the title itself. On the cover it has a picture of Gemma, so naturally I assumed that it was her beauty that was great and terrible, but as the story progressed and it became clear that Pippa was the beautiful one, not Gemma, I wondered what beauty it was describing. I found out near the end of the book, that Gemma describes the realms as having a great and terrible beauty, I was even more confused. Why name the book after the beauty of the realms, and have the main character on the cover?
All in all, I would give this book about a seven; it definitely was not the best book I ever read, but it was an interesting read, and I will probably read the sequel, Rebel Angels.

Sincerely,
Clara Green