TeenBitches and Tiaras

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Songs for this book: Misery Business- Paramore 

I'm not sure what i was expecting from this book but it was definitely not what I just read.
The beginning of this book was intriguing. The concept of beauty queens in the wild sparked my interest for sure. But reading it, i found it very hard to understand what was going on. Supposedly almost everyone on the plane died, yet these girls are just shrugging it off like nothing happened. Which made me question what was really going on. I just found it hard to believe that people could act this way after what just happened. I realize this could have been a copping mechanism, denial. but they never seem to acknowledge it any differently. To add to my confusion Miss New Mexico had a tray sticking out of her forehead...? how was that not damaging to her brain? like, i'm sorry I just can grasp the fact that she really has a hunk of shrapnel in her head. Next on my list of "things I cannot believe": Sosie and the snake. Ummmmmmmm what she was actually swallowed by the sNAKE??

Then in the middle of the story I had no idea where the story was headed. all these background stories of the girls. The actual plot was at a complete stand still. And these stories were bizarre. The WIld girl? what does that mean? i was so confused. I thought she was turning into a werewolf at first.

Ok so lets skip the rant about the rest of the things i cannot believe/ dont understand about this book. towards the end I actually got into the story. This book was like Lord of the Flys meets 1984 meets an ABCfamily TV show.
And so lastly lets just say despite the weirdness throughout this book Libba Bray certainly knows how to wrap up an ending. That was my favorite part of the book. the flash forwards were great and it was the best closure i have had at tthe end of a book in a long time. :)    

Official Overview:
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.


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