This book caught my eye right away. It is YA Regency era, which I love, and I’ve read some of the author’s other works and enjoyed them. but even with my high expectations, I loved A School for Unusual Girls by Kathleen Baldwin.

This novel is about a girl, Georgian Fitzwilliam. It takes place at about the time Napoleon is exiled on Elba and tells the story of Georgian being sent to a finishing school. But this finishing school isn’t like any other and as Georgie gets more and more involved in the school and comes to know the other girls, she realizes they aren’t working to overcome their unusual skills, but to use them for the good of the country.

If Jane Austen wrote the storyline for X-men, this is the book you would get. I loved the tiny supernatural elements, but also that our main character was needed for her smarts, not any superpower. I like the main character and how she really showed a lot of resilience through the story even though a times she bordered on whiny.

This book was more intense then I thought it would be. We have torturing and near death experiences as part of the norm. It was much more exciting than your typical regency and I like how the author changed one thing in history and tried to show the difference that would make. I was surprised how much I loved Lord Wyatt and thought the villain was probably the most well-done character of the bunch.

My only problem with this was that sometimes the people would do or say things that seemed out of character and a couple of the characters were really hard for me to picture because of this, especially Miss Stranje. I couldn’t really figure her out, and I wanted to believe in her super tough, awesome teacher persona, but then she would go and be all mushy or drop her guard. I just found her a little unbelievable.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a series (it ends with a lot of unresolved issues), a great regency, or a YA with a good love story. Happy reading, my friends!!