Book Review – Beauty Queens

Book: Beauty Queens – Author: Libba Bray

Genre: Young Adult, Adventure, Survival

Description from Goodreads:

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island’s other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.

My Review:

I knew going in that this one was a toss-up. Would it be cheesy and over-dramatic or would it be hilarious? While there ARE definitely some occasional eye-rollingly shallow comments, I’m leaning towards the latter…but with meaning.

Ok, so you’ve seen Legally Blonde, right? Now, imagine Elle and her sorority sisters tossed into an episode of Lost…that will give you a smidgen of an idea of what to expect from this book. Then add in the insane pageant coordinator from Miss Congeniality, an Elvis-loving violent dictator, a secret volcano “bad guy” lair, a bunch of psychotropic plants, a couple of giant snakes….oh, and some teeny-bopper pirates, and you end up with one CRAZY book! Was that too many spoilers? I hope not.

Alright, so, yeah, it was a crazy premise, but really, this book was kind of amazing. This extreme situation took a bunch of girls who had been told their entire lives that they had to mold themselves into what everyone else wanted them to be, stripped them bare, gave them confidence, and made them realize exactly who they were and that the only people they had to prove themselves to was themselves. It was an extremely positive message wrapped up in a dark-humored satire.

And it was interesting, it didn’t occur to me until about halfway through the book, but a bunch of beauty queens is EXACTLY who you would want to be stranded with on a desert island. (Get your mind out of the gutter and let me explain, lol!) Think about it. These are the ambitious girls. The girls who need to have a TON of impressive extracurriculars. The girls who are pre-premed or pre-engineering or pre-somethingelsecompletelyawesome. These are the girls who may look pretty and sound vapid, but when you combine them together, the amount of survival-skill knowledge they possess would be immense!

Yes, there is romance (liars! lol). There’s actually all sorts of romance. The author didn’t shy away from anything here. These girls are finding themselves and that includes figuring out their sexuality. But it blends into the story; none of the romances seem to be there just to have romances (even with the seemingly random insertion of the aforementioned teeny-bopper pirates…where did THEY come from?!?).

All in all, this was a pretty great book. I read it in one day (that’s 396 pages in one day), so you can tell I liked it. I’d highly recommend it to people who love slightly absurd novels…or anyone who just really likes Legally Blonde. 😉

Similar Book(s):

Uh…well? I have no idea. Try this link: Books Like Beauty Queens