Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Title: Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Scholastic
Publish Date: May 24, 2011
Source: Library

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a young adult fiction fan.
• You like comedy and satire.
• You like story lines that are a little off kilter.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "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."

My Two Cents:

This is sort of a strange book. The premise is pretty out there. Teen beauty queens from the Teen Dream pageant are stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashes. Was it really just a plane crash or something more? Add a creepy corporation and a sinister Sarah Palin-like pageant owner and you have a whole bunch of craziness. I had a really hard time with my suspension of disbelief for this book; it was just that crazy.

At first I really liked the story and then it got stranger...moreThis is sort of a strange book. The premise is pretty out there. Teen beauty queens from the Teen Dream pageant are stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashes. Was it really just a plane crash or something more? Add a creepy corporation and a sinister Sarah Palin-like pageant owner and you have a whole bunch of craziness. I had a really hard time with my suspension of disbelief for this book; it was just that crazy.

At first I really liked the story and then it got stranger and stranger, which is why I think I had so much trouble with the suspension of disbelief. First, just the girls (and some other creepy things are on the island). Then there's the crew of a pirate tv show on the island as well. For a little bit, it felt like things were just being added to be added without really adding value. I would have loved to see more of a focus on the girls and how the island is changing them, as this was one of my favorite parts of the book.

I did like seeing the transformation of (some of) the girls. Some definitely came into their own a little bit more than the others. At first, most of them are annoyingly into their beauty regiments and are still sizing each other up as competitors after the plane crash. They begin to get more into trying to actually survive on the island but some of them cling to their beauty queen past and can't seem to realize that they need to step it up a little bit.

Libba Bray is hilarious. There's all of these footnotes every so often that are just hilarious and some of them had me laughing out loud. Even though the premise of this book was not my favorite, I would definitely read more by Libba Bray because she has a fantastic sense of humor.

Bottom line: Funny writing, not so funny story line.