Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

TEEN CHICK LIT

Survival.
Of the fittest.

The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to 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?

Stumbling across Libba Bray is probably the best thing I have ever done in my life. Beauty Queens was complex, unusual, fierce, and deeper than any teen novel I've read before. And I have to say, all that made this book a definite keeper.

I'll start by introducing the surviving beauty queens first. Here we go:

Shanti: a gorgeous Indian girl who's trying to work hard on being likeable--because no one chooses a girl as angry as a hornet. She thinks she has the diversity thing down pat, but when Nicole, the black girl on the block, wanders in, the competition gets a lot tougher.
Nicole: the only beauty queen I didn't really get into very much. She's black, resents her pageant-obsessed mother, and just wants to be friendly. What's new?
Tiara: the dumb girl with the sparkle hips who secretly wants to be an interior designer is stepping out of stereotypes. She may not know how to spell douche, but she's an awesome character who I was rooting for the whole way.
Mary Lou: the sweet, naive Miss Nebraska is trying to tamp down the curse that's been messing with the ladies of her family for generations. But she can't help it--at night, she transforms into a wild girl who loves the feel of her body and isn't afraid to get wild with a guy...
Adina: she wants to be a journalist, but first, she has to get over the annoying leader the group has chosen. As if things weren't bad enough, with all the stupid girls whining about their nails, she has to go and do it with a hot pirate and then find out she got videotaped.
Jennifer: she's a dyke, and she's proud of it. A comic geek, Star Trek watching lesbo isn't exactly the number one candidate for Miss America. But when she falls head over heels for Sosie, things get even more complicated.
Taylor: Miss Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins has conquered Texas, and now she's ready to take over the beauty queens stranded on the island. After all, she is eighteen, and it's her last year to compete. Nothing can get in her way, not even a team of secret agents planning to murder the girls on the other side of the island...
Sosie: she might be hearing impaired, but she's also trying to figure out her own feelings. Jennifer might like her--even love her--but does she really want a girlfriend at the moment?

I was a little skeptical at first, thinking: how is this author going to tie in the stories of eight different beauty queens without making cardboard characters? Boy, was I off. I feel like I've been friends with all these beauty queens for years, and it's a good feeling. These girls were the types of friends you want to have. Each character's backstory was explored, weaved in, and resolved. Each beauty queen was so different, so unique, and yet I understood all of them.

Plus, there was the whole bit about the agents trying to murder them. Honestly, the book was great enough without the subplot, but it became a whole new degree of amazing when the bad guys were defeated by a pack of teen beauty queens and their pirate/actor boyfriends. Kickass drama, plus a load of pirates who washed ashore and have great abs, equals one helluva novel.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray gets five stars!

Review: This Girl Isn't Shy, She's Spectacular by Nina Beck

CONTEMPORARY TEEN ROMANCE

Samantha Owens is fed up with being a good girl. So she's skipping out on her stuffy boarding school and finishing up her senior year in New York City. There, Sam reunites with her former fat-camp roomie, the irrepressible Riley Swain, and is drawn into Riley's high-glamour, high-fashion world: think deluxe makeovers, dates with wealthy boys, and wild nights out.

Then Sam meets D, the gorgeous, wicked boy who once broke Riley's heart. Sam is supposed to hate D, but she can't. Quite the opposite. And D can't seem to stay away from Sam, who never wanted things to get this complicated.

But no one said reinventing yourself--or falling in love--was ever supposed to be easy...

For me, this was a so-so book. I prefer books in the first person, so I can really sink into the characters, but here, both Sam and D were written in third person, and I just didn't get into their heads as much as I would have liked to.

Plus, when you like a secondary character more than you like either of the protagonists, you know the book's trouble. Riley Swain, Sam and D's mutual friend, was probably my favorite character in the whole book. Her sassy attitude cracked me up, and she was always pushing Sam to go achieve her goals and get with D. She was there for Sam every step of the way, just like a true friend, which I really admired. Riley was a great character, and I think the first book by this author, called This Book Isn't Fat, It's Fabulous, is written from Riley's perspective, so I'm definitely picking that up.

Sam was pretty much a "blah" main character. Self-doubt in characters is important, because it gives them a chance to grow through the book, but here, I think Sam was being downright stupid, not doubting herself. I wish I could say I was dazzled by her character and wanted to read more, but that's not the case.

D, however, was a different story. While he still can't quite measure up to Riley, he was a pretty good character, especially at the beginning of the book. Near the first few pages, he seemed like an incredibly sexy, mysterious character. Near the end, the reader finds out that he is not really that mysterious, which kind of ruins his character, but the fantasy was nice while it lasted. He was a great guy, with witty dialogue and a hint of self-doubt here and there. He did some excellent developing in this book.

The romance here was fantastic. I don't often go for teen romances, but this one stood out to me because of the cute cover and the sassy title, and I really liked how the romance developed in this one. D and Sam started wary of each other but grew fond of each other in the way teens do. The way their love for each other developed was so authentic that I couldn't help but be drawn into the plot.

This Girl Isn't Shy, She's Spectacular by Nina Beck gets three stars.