Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

So my first review ever! Who's excited?!? I know I am a bit late on this book, but I figure better late than never.

Beauty Queens
Author- Libba Bray
Published- May 24th, 2011
Scholastic Press
396 pages
Purchased on my own

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. ----Goodreads

First off let me say that this cover is pure genius. I mean, who thinks of putting lipsticks instead of bullets in the bandoleer? I had so many people ask me to look at the cover so the could take a closer look. On top of that, the cover and the subject actually match. Don't you hate when you see a girl in a prom dress on the cover but the book is about a dolphin?....grrr...it's almost like what were they thinking when they designed that cover?

In addition to having a great cover, the book had me laughing so hard. Think of it as a combination of LOST and Miss Congeniality..awesome right! I especially loved the footnotes at the bottom of the page that contained hilarious jokes about the fictional company called the "Corporation". One of my favorites was about a product called Lady 'Stache Off, a hair remover that could also act as a bomb in a pinch.

One of my favorite characters is for sure Mary Lou, one of the twelve surviving castaways. Mary Lou is a country girl that I think of as growing up in the "hicks". In the book she is trying to prove that her family is not just a bunch of wild women that need to be tamed.She overcomes the stigma about the women in her family so wonderfully and I absolutely love when the action takes place from her point of view. Also joining Mary Lou is a slew of other sassy sidekicks. Adina is the secret spy in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant and Taylor Krystal Rene Hawkins is the undeclared leader who seriously knows her way around survival. I also love how the book touched on some pretty progressive subjects. One of the castaways named Jennifer is lesbian and another named Petra is transgender. I felt that the author put these tough subjects into very neat perspectives and spun them in a way that all people can relate and understand the toughness of their situation. I feel that adding these elements in the book created a positive awareness that yes, girls and boys all around the world are gay and transgender and that it is nothing to be ashamed of.

One nit-picky thing I have to say is about Mrs. New Mexico. In the book, she survives the crash, but ends up with a tray table embedded in her skull. Now think about this for a second. If you are on a deserted island and you have a tray table in your head how the heck does it not get infected?!? The whole time while reading I was thinking "this girl would have died from an infection long ago". Maybe its just me, but I found that bothersome.

SPOILER (highlight to read)

When the book finally came to a close and the book began to describe what each beauty queen went on to be/ do in life irked me a little bit. I totally did not expect half of them to be house-wife's. Did the author not realise that THEY JUST SURVIVED AN ATTACK ON THEIR LIVES! What group of girls survives an army of ROC militants attacking them?!? These girls! I totally expected for all of them to be rocket scientists or something. Anyhoo, that's just me...
Overall I enjoyed learning about all of the girls and how they broke the stereotype of a typical beauty queen. It is definitely worth reading!

I will be rating this book 4 stars ~




--McKenna :)