Series

• A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)
• Rebel Angels (Gemma Doyle #2)
• The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle #3)

Below the video are some of my thoughts on the first two books in the series. If you read them, what did you think?

On A Great & Terrible Beauty
I picked up A Great and Terrible Beauty from Coas Used Bookstore because I read Going Bovine earlier this year and loved it. I tend to be annoyingly loyal when I find authors I like (which I suppose is why I own almost every Neal Shusterman and John Green novel). Immediately I likened A Great and Terrible Beauty to A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett – English girl growing up in colonial India has to return to England because something terrible happened in her family and is then sent off to boarding school. And from there the comparison changes.  If you’ve seen the movie The Craft, and enjoyed it, you’ll enjoy this supernatural period piece. It’s one of thise that has you unsure who the bad guy is and wondering who to trust until the end.

On Rebel Angels:
I quite love the type of book that keeps me guessing until the end. The girls, Gemma, Felicity and Ann are on the search for Circe, who wants to harness the power of the realms for herself. As I read, I told myself, it can’t be (this person) but I know it is. But it could also be this other person. I’m not sure.

Rebel Angels kept me engaged, from trying to figure out who Circe was to watching Pippa become corrupted by the realm, to wondering, along with Gemma, who she could trust and what he implications for trusting the wrong people are.

Because it’s a trilogy, I knew going in that Gemma wasn’t going to die, but their discovery of Circe’s identity and the events that ensue, left me wondering what Libba Bray had in store for the third novel.