Monday 26 August 2013

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Beauty QueensBeauty Queens by Libba Bray

Add to: Goodreads
Source: Won
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Format: Hardcover, 396 pages
Release Date: May 24, 2011

The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.
This book is crazy. Crazy AWESOME. Girl power, hilarity and Boyz Will B Boyz... what's not to love?

Libba Bray has set out to write a thought-provoking, hilarious novel with a ridiculous premise and... she's done it. This is a novel that I can almost guarantee will have you laughing (on every page if you're anything like me), thinking about some deeper questions and developing a connection to at least one of the characters.

The Miss Teen Dream contestants are a diverse and outrageous group. They begin as intentionally stereotyped characters but with each passing chapter, layers are peeled back and the real complex nature of these girls is revealed. We judge these girls and their behaviour so quickly but when all is said and done, it's a group of pretty amazing women. I had no trouble connecting on a really personal level to a bunch of these girls, despite the moulds they're built from.

Libba Bray makes you think but she has fun (and lets you have plenty of your own!) while doing it. Through a series of footnotes and commercials that I worried may get repetitive but never did, the ridiculous nature of some of the things we value and demand as a society are brought up. Why are girls pressured to be so perfect? What is perfect? When does it end, does it ever end? The reality of the consumerism and commercialization in the novel and our own world is well-written and almost uncomfortably true.

Whether you go into this novel for a laugh, for the crazy schemes or for terrorist Momo B. ChaCha's stuffed lemur (all of which are very good reasons), I hope that you leave with more. Although, with Libba Bray's expert hand penning the story, I doubt you'll need my hope.

4.5 Golden Crowns!

Cover Comments: This cover is perfection! The makeshift lipstick sash? A+

9 comments:

  1. I have heard that the premise of this book is absolutely cray-cray.... but it's nice to know that Libba Bray totally pulls it off! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You make it sound fabulous. Although your short version of the story did make me laugh.

    Charmaine Smith (For more on Premier Sitka Alaska Fishing Trips All-Inclusive - click here)

    ReplyDelete
  3. for me this is a very very good information, because its contents make us become better know and learn more about the wide world, so it would greatly add insight for me, laneways that I say many thanks
    pengobatan untuk sembuhkan leukimia akut

    ReplyDelete
  4. very pleased to visit this site and joined commented in his
    obat penghilang mioma uteri tradisional

    ReplyDelete
  5. for me this is a very very good information, because its contents make us become better know and learn more about the wide world, so it would greatly add insight for me, laneways that I say many thanks
    pengobatan untuk sembuhkan hepatitis c

    ReplyDelete
  6. By the way, Thank you for sharing with us, and we sincerely hope you will continue to update or post other articles. 6(^)6
    suplemen dan vitamin pemutih kulit bpom

    ReplyDelete