A Great and Terribly Beauty by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty is quite excellent. It formed the characters very well, and the humor was quite entertaining. However, I thought the plot was kind of off. I don't know...something about it didn't...glow. Good plots 'glow' when I read them, but I didn't really get the 'glow' here. However, it was awesome overall. I'm looking forward to reading Rebel Angels, the sequel. I have the whole Gemma Doyle trilogy. My sister bought them, but she didn't even read them so I'm reading them for her. Here's a good quote:

"You can never really know someone completely. That's why t's the most terrifying thing in the world, really - taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. It's such a precarious balance, its a wonder we do it at all."

-Gemma Doyle (pg. 397)

This book is about a girl named Gemma Doyle. Gemma is a girl who is ambitious, confident, and isn't afraid of anything.  Eventually, after being sent to Spence Academy when her mother commits suicide against a mysterious shadow creature, she meets Ann, Pippa, and Felicity. Gemma's mother is a woman part of the organization called, "the Order". The women of the Order are women that are enabled to create illusions, open portals, and guide spirits in the afterlife, and the power of prophecies. Kartik, a man from the Rakshana, and organization of men that hate the Order, is kind of like a stalker and warns Gemma not to use her powers. Gemma ignores however and she and her friends often enter a realm where everything is perfect and possible. At the end of the book, when Felicity goes crazy because a huntress from the realm of possibility tricks her into believing that Gemma is selfish and using her own powers for herself, the huntress is discovered to be one of the shadow creatures in the beginning, who is working for Circe. Circe is a woman of Spence Academy and the Order. Her original name was Sarah, and her friend was Mary Dowd, who was also part of Spence Academy and the Order, and is Gemma's mother. Sarah went too crazy with her power and basically became evil and is trying to kill Gemma. Gemma manages to get rid of the shadow monster, however Pippa dies because she chooses to stay in the realm.