The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

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 It's been a year since Gemma Doyle arrived at Spence. After saving the Realms from the Poppy soldiers, Gemma forges herself to the Realm's magic. Now, Gemma approaches her London debut, the Order and the Rashkanna are fighting for control of the Realms. It seems like questions follow everywhere Gemma goes. Why now is Spence's East Wing finally being rebuilt? What's going on with Pippa?

Calling this book mediocre would be too generous. It was awful! The second book in this series was amazing and it got my hopes up very high for this book. I didn't like The Sweet Far Thing at all.  For the most part, this book was really boring. I'm just glad this series is finally over.

This 800-page book was much longer than it needed to be. There were some parts that were obviously added in to make the book longer. Despite the length, Gemma didn't even accomplish what she needed to do. She won a battle, not the war.

The characters in this series are just awful. Gemma was so one dismissal in this book. Felicity was simply annoying. And Ann... I still feel bad for her. Mostly because she's forced to spend so much time with Gemma and Felicity. And Pippa? She was just irritating. I keep waiting for Libba Bray to kill her off, but nope! She has no importance to this story at all.

Another thing I wasn't a fan of was the plot twist when two of the characters were revealed to be lesbians. I didn't like that sexual orientation was being used as a plot twist. Especially since these two girls never showed any sign of being in love. It felt like Libba Bray just threw in that scene because she wanted to surprise people.

While talking about a terrible plot twist, the huge twist at the end didn't affect me at all. At that point, I was so bored and sick of the characters, I just couldn't care.

I'm not saying Libba Bray is a bad writer. Her descriptions are so vivid and lovely. The Gemma Doyle series read like a classic novel that helped set the time period of Victorian London.

I wouldn't recommend this book unless you really LOVED the first two books in the series.

Page count: 819 pages

Published: December 26, 2007

Genre: historical fiction, fantasy

Series: Gemma Doyle book 3

My rating: 2 stars

Trigger warnings: fat-shaming, horrible attitudes towards disability, sexual abuse backstory

Buy this book

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Also by Libba Bray:

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