A Great And Terrible Beauty

This book is about a girl named Gemma Doyle. She has grown up in India, but has wanted to go to England all of her life. Her mom commits suicide, but they tell everyone it was cholera. So she gets to go to London. She finally gets to go by going to Spence Academy, a girls boarding school. There she meets and builds friendships with Felicity, a jealous daughter of a commander in the army, Pippa, a girl forced to marry for the sake of her parents, but she has epilepsy, and Ann, a poor orphan there on a scholarship. They soon learn that Gemma has the power to go to the relms, a magical place. But there is a twist. Circe, a powerful creature, is trying to take over the realms. She is told this through a messenger, a little girl. She leads Gemma to a cave, where their art teacher brought them to do sketches, where she finds the diary of Mary Dowd. The 4 girls go to the cave every night to go to the realms, because they find it enchanted and magical. So Gemma has to keep that from happening. She also finds out that there was a fire in Spence in 1871, and that they hid the picture to "not bring back memories". But she finds the hidden picture and looks for Mary Dowd. She discovers Mary is her mom and Sarah is Circe. Gemma goes there one day with the 4 of them against her will. They wanted to go, but Gemma didn't think everything was okay. She takes them there and they find Circe chasing them and are chased for a long time. In the end, Pippa dies by being drowned by Circe. But the people there don't know that, so they blame her epilepsy Gemma had a vision telling her that it was going to happen, but she didn't know when. In the end, they burry Pippa and continue on with their lives at Spence.

Rating:*****

S.B.