Review: Beauty Queens - Libba Bray

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press (May 24, 2011)

From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.
Teen beauty queens. A "Lost"-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to email. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

My Thoughts...

This book was more than I expected it to be.  At the start these girls were all about becoming Miss Teen Dream, and I wanted to smack most of them upside the head.  As the story progressed we watched these girls grow, change, and learn how to survive in their new environment.  I really enjoyed watching friendships grow between people who only saw each other as competition.  The relationships in this book really captured me, but really that couldn't have happened had these characters not stolen my heart.  I really loved the girls in the later part of the book, when most of them have shed there pageant self and just started being real.  There were quite a few things that threw me for a loop, but Libba Bray really made it all work wonderfully.  I give this one 4 stars and I hope you guys will give this one a try.  It is quirky and funny and so so much more.