Review of Beauty Queens

My review of Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is based on a hardback copy that I won from Lauren of Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf. The following review is my honest opinion of the work.

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."

First off I have got to say what an amazing cover this is. All the bright colors totally caught my eye the first time that I saw it AND I love that they [they being whoever put together this awesome cover] used lipsticks in place of the bullets you often see on commandos or whatever those people are called. Can you tell I don't watch many action flicks? I'm sure my boyfriend could totally tell me if I asked but I won't and instead will just say that it is such a COOL effect.

Aside from the cover love I have to say that I love the premise of the novel especially because it hits close to home. No, I am not nor have I ever been or will be a beauty queen. But my friends and I did frequently plot ways of getting similar people stranded on islands or lost in the artic tundra frequently when aggravated with said people. This may have happened a lot. The getting aggravated part not the sending of these people to dangerous locales.

The beauty queens themselves were an interesting bunch in masse but where they really shown through was when you started getting the individual points of views or even when they got narrowed down into smaller groups for various reasons. They were quite some characters.

Snarky, sarcastic, very tongue-in-cheek humor. Love the way that it is written ESPECIALLY the footnotes. And as a college student it takes a lot to make me appreciate footnotes. Beauty Queens is a brilliantly written satire that I want to share with every girl I know. It should be a must read. I laughed, I groaned, I forced my Mom to listen to me read passages out loud [which can be pure torture because I am so not a good reader...out loud anyway].

Beauty Queens manages to bring up so many issues that society as a whole really needs to take into consideration; and not just with their usual lack of open-mindedness. Though hilarious this book is one of those that makes you think, why is that funny why does that strike you that way? What is this book really saying? It's more than just a bunch of beauty queens trapped on a desert island, it's about narrow-minded society needing to stop and take a good look around them. At least, that's what I got out of it. You might reach different conclusions.

Beauty Queens was nothing like what I was expecting when I picked up the book, which was a light-hearted quick read. I'll admit it was the first book in awhile I had to invest some serious time into and it made me think. I'm giving Beauty Queens by Libba Bray a four out of five stars.