J-Recommended for junior high school students. (An ALA Best Book for YAs.) Claire Rosser, KLIATT Bray is totally successful in placing her readers in the confinement of Victorian England and also in the freedom of the strange spirit world Gemma finds.

A mysterious young man, present at the death of Gemma's mother in India, and now close by the school where Gemma is enrolled in England, provides added intrigue. It reads like an adult novel, except that the characters are teenagers the character development and vocabulary are rich and meaty. There is much that is appealing in this story. The plight of young women at that time is most acutely felt in one friend of Gemma's, Pippa, a beautiful girl whose greedy parents are trying to marry her off to the richest man they can find, all the while hiding her epilepsy. It turns out the mother once was a student at this school, that strange deaths happened at the school while she was there, and that the gift Gemma has seems to have come to her from her mother. Gemma and a small group of girls capitalize on Gemma's strange gifts to connect them to a spirit world, and for Gemma the most precious connection is with her dead mother. When Gemma is delivered to the school and meets her roommate and the other girls in her class, the story takes on some of the familiar themes of school stories: new girl horrors, cliques of friends, pressure to conform, sneaking about after hours, secret societies. This murder begins the story, and it is shrouded in strange occurrences that hint of the occult. The narrator is Gemma, a 16-year-old who abruptly must leave India with her opium-addicted father after the murder of her mother. The time is 1895 the action begins in India, then continues in England at a select school for girls. It is historical fiction, perhaps better described as Gothic fiction.

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, January 2004: The cover is compelling: a photograph of the back of a young woman dressed in old-fashioned corsets. A great and terrible beauty.' Retrieved from A great and terrible beauty.' The Free Library.

A great and terrible beauty book