Ugh, this was an annoying disappointment. I had read one Libba Bray book previously that I liked, about teenage pageant contestants stranded on an island, and hoped that this book about teenage witches at a finishing school for girls would be equally fun. Instead, it’s annoying, and the girls are annoying, and the book would’ve been a short story if anybody had bothered to SPEAK TO EACH OTHER. Plus, redemption arcs for the mean girls? That is a suspension bridge of disbelief too far for this nerdy wallflower.
Gemma is a brat. She’s 16, living in India with her parents, and desperately wants to go to London for her debut/coming out/whatever. Her mom says no, with no explanation given. So bratty Gemma throws a fit and runs away from her mother in a busy marketplace, getting lost without a chaperone. A mysterious caped boy chases her, and she has a vision of her mother dying in a shop.
Cut to a few months later, where Gemma has gotten her wish and is shipped off to a finishing school for young ladies in England. Her widower father has collapsed in grief, and her grandmother and brother are uninterested, so she’s on her own. She keeps having the visions, and the caped boy apparently followed her from India and keeps telling her to stop it, but won’t tell her how or why. In the visions, she keeps seeing her dead mother, so of course she’s not going to stop. Her dead mother won’t tell her who the boy is, who she was, and why all of a sudden Gemma can do magic.
Gemma is assigned Anne, the sad plain scholarship student, as a roommate, poor and destined only to be a governess. Felicity and Pippa are the Draco Malfoys of the piece and immediately start harassing the new girl. Somehow, the four of them end up doing magic together and become fast friends, even though Dead Mom keeps telling them to stop it, and Caped Boy keeps telling them to stop it, but nobody ever saying anything more useful than “It’s dangerous.”
Well guess what! It was dangerous! I don’t entirely blame Gemma for making stupid decisions: she’s 16 and that’s basically required, and nobody would give her any real information to make better decisions. But everybody keeps making the dumbest possible choice, and I wasn’t sure why I was supposed to be rooting for any of these nitwits.
Maybe I’m too old and cranky for YA, but I wanted to smack everyone. Share information and stop being stupid! Don’t teach the bitchy girls to do magic! Stop being so teenagery about everything!
