Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Published: May 2011

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Pages: 396

Copy Provided by:  Won from another blog

Summary: Goodreads

Summary:

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.

Review:

What did I love about this book?  I LOVE the cover, it is smart, sassy and witty.  Libba Bray is entertaining as hell and has a sense of humor that is ridonculous.  What I didn't like is that I really could not get into this story.  I tried.  No, I really, really tried but I was about 150 pages in when I finally threw in the towel.  Have you ever done that?  You look at your bookshelf and see that lonely bookmark begging you to move it forward...but ever so covertly, you shift your eyes to something that seems a bit more appealing?  That is what I have been doing ALL MONTH.  Its horrible and I feel awful.  I really wanted to love this book and I enjoyed the humor and the sarcastic quips throughout but then I felt that that was all I was reading.  Sassy comebacks from spoiled, ditzy girls who were all starting to get on my nerves and after about 150 pages, I had yet to figure out if there was a story to Beauty Queens at all.

Dear Libba.  

I hope you don't take offense to my criticism and that others will see more in your book than I have but Beauty Queens, I'm just not that into you.  I'm afraid I'm going to have to initiate a book breakup. Good luck in your next relationship.

All the best, 

Christinabean