A Great and Terrible Beauty: Books: Libba Bray?

Question

Has any one read this book? Can someone just give me a short summary of the book?

Answer 1

Set in 1890s India/England/Fantasy land
A young girl (fifteen or sixteen) is living in India with her parents. She is unhappy and wanting to go to England be like other kids. She's talking back to her mother in the marketplace and acting like an ungrateful brat. They fight and argue. Her mother sends her home and continues on the errand by herself. HOWEVER, minutes later the young girl supernaturally has a vision of her mother's death. A premonition which proved to be true. The family returns to England. The father is depressed and addicted to drugs (opium, maybe???) and the girl is sent to a boarding school. She arrives at the boarding school and she's weirded out because of her reception on the road. I think they run into a village or camp of gypsies or something. Anyway, at school she doesn't fit in and the kids pick on her. She's befriended by another person her age who is also an outcast. She essentially hates the school and hates her classmates. One day she finds a journal/diary...I believe in the woods or in the caves or some weird location not in the normal routine of the students...and she begins reading it. The contents shock her. The diary is of a young girl who has supernatural powers and tells how she travels between dimensions--reality and magical fantasy realms. She discovers that she can go as well. The magic is within her it seems. And she discovers that she can take others with her. She uses this power to make friends with her classmates. This whole group of girls now go back and forth between reality and fantasy worlds heedless of any possible dangers. There are dangers, it is risky. And they do break the rules. There are consequences.

Answer 2

Well, the summary seems to have been covered. But condensed: Girl's mother dies, girl goes to English boarding school, girl discovers great powers and with her friends ventures into other realms despite the danger there...Great books. Read it, then its sequel 'Rebel Angels'! Way great, and they are NOT as innapropriate romance mush as the cover and back summary suggest.