Your favorite series - The Gemma Doyle Trilogy

Day 03 – Your favorite series


This is one is a toughie. ObviouslyHarry Potter and my newest obsession The Song of Fire and Ice series are high up there in my heart. But, I'm going to go with the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. 

The first in the trilogy is called A Great and Terrible Beauty. I'm the worst for this, but I totally judge a book by its cover. And LOOK AT THIS COVER! It's gorgeous. The second I saw it I said yep, I'm reading that. And I did. And it was awesome. 


The book centers around a girl named (obviously) Gemma Doyle and it is set in Victorian times. Gemma has been raised in India, but is sent back "home" to England to attend a boarding school after her mother's death. At Spence, the boarding school, she discovers secrets about her mother's former life and forces herself into the "cool girl" clique. Gemma begins to receive visions, one of which leads her and the other girls to an other-worldly realm. Gemma discovers that she has been followed from India by a boy named Kartik (oh Kartik. Be still my heart.) Experiencing magic and amazing power, the girls find it hard to go back to being simple Victorian women expected to live simple lives as wives and mothers. They also learn that magic doesn't come without a price. 


After I read this book, I went out and devoured the next two books, Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing. I cried my eyes out when I got to the end. Not only was the ending wonderful and terrible at the same time, I simply didn't want it to end. I didn't want that to be it. I wanted to continue life with Gemma, Pippa, Felicity and Ann. I wanted to see how they grew up and whether they had children and did their children go to Spence and did they do magic too?! I also wanted to take Kartik out of the book and love him forever and ever and ever. He's definitely in my top 10 literary crushes. I actually lost these books somewhere in my many moves and just went out and bought them all again in hardcover so that I could re-read them someday. 


I highly recommend this book. It's good historical fiction, girly fiction, feminist fiction, young adult fiction, etc. It's just plain good fiction. Pin It