Book 1: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Book 2: Rebel Angels

Book 3: The Sweet Far Thing

Imagine Pride & Prejudice meets Harry Potter meets Dead Poet’s Society and you have the Gemma Doyle trilogy.  Libba Bray has crafted this imaginative, lovely story of Miss Gemma Doyle, the 17 year old heroine of this Victorian era.  I may have a soft spot for Libba Bray, who lives in my neighborhood, but she weaves together India, Victorian England, and fantasy in a solid YA series.  Bray’s themes of rebellious girls breaking free from what is expected of them (a recurring theme of my own rebellious teenage years certainly), is perhaps what makes this “YA fiction” more than anything else, but still there’s a lot of classic good vs. evil storytelling at play here.  With all apologies to the author, the Harry Potter series is the standard by which I judge all other YA fiction (particularly series), and while this series is no Harry Potter, I don’t think it attempts to be that at all.  Bray is clever and she treats her characters with great care.  I could not put these books down.  I look forward to re-reading the adventures of Gemma later and Bray’s newest novel, Going Bovine, and hopefully more trilogies from her in the future.  (And secretly, I hope to run into her at the coffee shop!)