a cute story. Can't wait to see what happens next! Totally charming and enjoyable,
This is written in the style of the traditional British girls' boarding school, with the addition of magic including some interesting world building about magical Gifts and magical creatures and a queer theme.
The narrator is a lesbian and some of the other characters are queerleaning in a setting in which, as in those British schoolgirl books, there is no clear language available to describe lesbians or to express lesbian feelings and in which these feelings, as opposed to acceptable girlish friendships, are regarded with deep suspicion, so that Charlie, the narrator, is completely and deeply confused about what she feels.
I really enjoyed the way the writer occasionally very slyly inserts the terms 'queer' and 'straight' in Charlie's narration in ways that would be used in the boarding school genre, so that their literal meaning as used by Charlie is clear in context but their subtext cannot be lost on the contemporary reader.
As in the boarding school genre, the language can get a bit twee I'm sure this is deliberate to reflect that genre, but at times it feels a bit forced and the manoeuvring among the girls is both amusing and a bit silly.
The central romance is lovely, if at times a touch oversentimental this is again in keeping with the genre and is partly due to the fact that Charlie's love interest is described in very similar words over and over again.
But overall, what a fun and engrossing read, booksandtogether,
This is so, so good and deals with young sapphic love so well: the uncertainties, the internalized homophobia, the acceptance, the healing, Being in love myself, I feel such a kinship with Charley, and to some extent Rosalind and Esther,
The girls are all well developed and have strong, diverse personalities, with Charley having different relationships with each of them, In some ways, this was painful to read
because it's such an accurate portrayal of young sapphic love, but I'm glad I bolstered through,
A must as young adult romance, imho,
I liked it, I felt it could have used a little work here and there, but as a starter book, it was very good, The lesbian romance was reasonably well done, though I kind of wish there was the butch/femme dynamic, The self doubt shown by the protagonist was reasonable for the time period, I thought, A few overuses of slang, I thought, but over all a pretty good story, An absolutely charming book, really played into my nostalgia for schooldays I never actually had, Sweet and gentle and fun, I loved this story. At first, it's Hogwarts for lesbians, which is pretty awesome in and of itself, More than that, the main character Charley is such a welldefined young woman, with a sympathetic voice that springs to life, The portrayal of young, new love is poignant, and delightfully painful as it should be, This was exactly what I was looking for! A fun, humorous, magical tale with lots of friendships and an adorable f/f romance, I only with that it were longer, Got to the end, bought the next, What better recommendation can I give I've wanted to read this one since I read sitelinkRoslyn's review, I love boarding school stories and the idea of one with a lesbian narrator sounded so cool, My library purchase request has been in limbo for months, so I eventually decided to just buy it, I do not regret it!
It does indeed feel like an old school story, only with lesbians, And magic! I can't help feeling that this book series was based largely on the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton, which I absolutely adored as a child!
AllGirls bording school magic nice characters lesbian feelings perfect.
I'm reading bookatm and can't wait to find out how it's all resolved if it is yet : Magic plus girls' boarding school, That's an exciting combination to me, No, I didn't grow up on the British boarding school genre, but I wish I could have, I was a shy, awkward girl and now I'm a shy, awkward woman, yay! and the idea of an allgirl's school just sounded so appealing to me.
Probably I wouldn't have liked the reality half as much as the fantasy, but that's what school stories are for, And that's what stories with unicorns and pegasi are for, too,
In some ways, this is sort of like the complimentary opposite of Harry Potter, and not because it's a girls' school instead of a coed school.
Harry Potter is more of a story about magic, with added boarding school elements, while Pegasi and Prefects is more of a school story, with added magical elements.
Now, I'm really a novice at school stories, and still learning, but I could recognize many familiar elements from the school stories that I have read, And the magic, of course, which is so thoroughly integrated into this world that it's almost, but not quite, ordinary to the characters, I like that we're thrown straight into a world that nobody explains to us in detail, It's nice, to not have a lot of infodump, There's quite enough information given out to understand and follow, and that's, . . Well, not exactly enough, because I want to know more, and see more,
So that's the world, what about the characters It's a fine cast of girls, friendly, smart in their own ways, and trying to be decent and sometimes failing.
Most of the girls in this book are like that, except the awful Diana, We need a bad girl, and Diana definitely qualifies, She's the sort of awful, poisonous girl who is completely terrible to anyone she dislikes, to their faces and to their backs, and uses fake charm to get what she likes.
I hated her, almost completely, Because I did feel sorry for her, too, It must be awful, to be unable to relate to anyone honestly, or to be so unsure of being able to make true friends that you'd have to use lies to isolate your friends from anyone else they might spend time with.
How very sad for her, I still hate her, of course, The rest of the girls, though, Charley, our tomboy narrator. Sweet and quiet Rosalind, the object of her affections, Solid Cecily and the more dramatic Esther, Even Kitty, who only shows up briefly but makes quite an impression, They're all just so likeable, and fun to read about,
Reading Charley slowly fall for Rosalind was incredibly sweet, achingly so, I have so love for a romance that's built on genuine liking and respect instead of simple attraction, Charley's thoughts are, of course, complicated by the time she lives in, She doesn't have the same understanding or vocabulary to put her emotions into context that a modern girl would have, Neither can she hope for acceptance if she confesses her feelings, So when she starts plotting to engineer a marriage between Rosalind and her older brother, because he would be good to her and make her happy, and also because she could still stay close to her.
. . Well. She hurt my heart a little,
I very much needed something magical and sweet to read right now, and this fit the bill perfectly, There's very little as nice as reading the right book at the right time, and this just hit all the notes I needed it to, I'm looking forward to more of the same, very much so, .
Grab Your Edition Pegasi And Prefects (Scholars And Sorcery, #1) Authored By Eleanor Beresford Disseminated As Volume
Eleanor Beresford