Young Adult
Pages: 400
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: May 24, 2011
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 is one hell of an author. This was just not a book for me.
I was expecting to be entertained. I was expecting a laugh-out-loud sassy-smart satire. Maybe along the lines of Bumped by Megan McCafferty, which I loved. Because, besides the outpouring praise, the premise was fascinating!
Instead, this was over the top bubbly blended with over the top snark and an intricately boring plot in a failed attempt to criticize society. The few times I felt that the criticism on society was spot-on, I would get lost in the plot again. I just thought it was absolutely unrealistic, hard to keep up with, like, a gazillion characters that I didn't really care for. I kept zoning out during the whole book and forcefully dragging myself through it hoping to find somewhere the brilliant humor that I had heard it contained.
The writing was undeniably Libba Bray, because it was great writing. I'm sad I didn't enjoy this.
Overall, not a book for everyone.
I went back and forth on liking it and not as I read it but I decided that it had such important messages about the awesomeness inside each woman hidden within all the snarkiness that I ended up liking it.
ReplyDeleteLoL - I posted my review of this book like an hour ago, and rated it exactly the same way you did. Even your comments and mine run similar. *I swear I didn't read your review before I posted mine!!* Anyway, I felt a little guilty posting mine, because it seemed like everyone out there just loved it, and I couldn't figure out what I was missing. Glad to see I wasn't alone in my opinion!
ReplyDeleteCourtney
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