Monthly Archives: April 2008

1. When I fell in love it was three years ago this summer (our anniversary) and my “first”! 2. Spring is here when the flowers bloom and it heats up outside! 3. Oh no! The internet connection is down, time to fix it. 4. LOST is the craziest tv show ever. (you just never know what is going to happen, and half the time you don’t know WHY or WHAT is happening… yet you can’t stop watching!!) 5. Cheese and pasta make a great meal! 6. I’ve always wanted to plant a garden. 7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to ENJOYING THE EMPTY HOUSE!!, tomorrow my plans include having to pick up my family from the airport and Sunday, I want to look photogenic while I help a budding photographer take portraits!

This novel by Libba Bray is geared towards young girls; Gemma is not your average girl, she has lived her whole life in India with her British parents and has dreamed of going to London to school. On her birthday she ends up fighting with her mother and running off, only to experience a piercing vision of her mother’s murder. Her father has a breakdown after her mother’s death and Gemma is haunted by the visions. She is shipped off to Spence Boarding School for Young Ladies and is promptly outcast as “the new girl”. While Gemma struggles to make friends at Spence, she also struggles to understand her cryptic visions much to the dismay of a Gypsy messenger threatening her to close her mind to the visions… or else. This was a neat concept for a novel — of interest to young girls into magic and different worlds. I gave this book to my cousin on recommendation so I’m glad I’ve finally got a chance to read it. I stormed right through it and would definitely recommend it for an older girl — maybe 10 – 14 years old. Sometimes I was a bit shocked about the subject matter, but young girls (even those at a boarding school for young ladies in the Victorian Era) were not naive about sexuality. My only complaint is how the idea of magic switching from being “visions” to “visiting other rhelms” was not explained. It is interesting how there is also an “interview” [...]