Book Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

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.


Libba Bray has outdone herself. I did enjoy her other series, The Gemma Doyle Trilogy (although I did not care for the end of The Sweet Far Thing). But I'd seriously prefer Beauty Queens any day. She has brought things such as footnotes and commercial breaks inside this story. Just a great read. It's not amazing, but it is a great read.


Beauty Queens:
Published: May 24, 2011
Format: US Hardcover
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Average Rating: 3.83 stars
Page Count: 390 pages


Rating: 4/5 stars