Review: Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom by Brendan Halpin and Emily Franklin

  Title: Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom[Amazon|GoodReads]
  Author: Brendan Halpin [Website|Twitter] and Emily Franklin [Website]
  Standing: Stand alone novel.
  Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
  Published: March 27th, 2012 by Walker Childrens
  Format: Kindle edition; 257 pages.
  Source: ARC copy from publisher via NetGalley
  Challenge: Completely Contemp Challenge

Lucas and Tessa’s friendship is the stuff of legend in their small Midwestern town. So it’s no surprise when Lucas finally realizes his feelings for Tessa are more than friendship and he asks her to prom. What no one expected, especially Lucas, was for Tessa to come out as a lesbian instead of accepting his heartfelt invitation. Humiliated and confused, Lucas also feels betrayed that his best friend kept such an important secret from him.

What’s worse is Tessa’s decision to wear a tastefully tailored tuxedo to escort her female crush, sparking a firestorm of controversy. Lucas must decide if he should stand on the sidelines or if he should stand by his friend to make sure that Tessa Masterson will go to prom.

Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin tackle both sides of a ripped-from-the headlines story to show that true friendship will triumph after all.

So…this one’s getting filed under ‘book guilt’ because I honestly had that mental/emotional debate with myself where I wasn’t sure I could be honest about my mediocre feelings for this book.  Why?  Because while I do want to be respected as an honest reviewer, I also don’t want people to get the impression that I harbor views or beliefs that I most adamantly do not.  On the flip side, I can’t pretend to be gung-ho about a book that I didn’t entirely enjoy reading, that wouldn’t be fair to me or that book.  So I just want to say here and now that I am 100% pro gay-rights, and my thoughts on Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom aren’t some anti-gay statement.  I don’t feel guilty for giving the book a ‘meh’ review, but I do feel guilty that I even considered fudging things to make myself feel better about it.

I have to confess—there are few things I was more ambivalent about as a teen (and still am) than prom.  So maybe that should have been a clue right there that a book starring the word ‘prom’ wouldn’t really be the perfectly fitting glass slipper I’ve been waiting on.  And then when right at the beginning, Luke (one of our two protagonists) asks Tessa (the other) to prom with a grand gesture the whole town can see, I really should have just stopped.  Because I’m that girl.  The one who hates grand gestures and public displays of love of a giant scale.  I hate it when people propose on billboards at sports events, heck, I hate it when people propose in public period.  Something about it just makes me so uncomfortable and awkward.  These were the clues I should have taken and just not read this book, but I didn’t want to let something like the P word intimidate me out of a read, so I powered forward.

Here’s the lowdown.  I’ve determined that I’m not really a fan of the ‘let’s get together and write a book from two characters’ points of view…we can each write a character and go back in forth in first person perspective!’ books.  I read Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares which was also a miss for me, and even though I really liked The Future of Us, I can acknowledge that this is not a style I enjoy.  And then there was the fact that this book had “ABC Family Special” written all over it.  You know, if ABC Family were the type of channel to support “the gay agenda” (I’m assuming they’re not, but I could be wrong.  Modern Family is on ABC).  It was very agenda-driven.  A ‘we have a message!’ type book, that’s so steeped in warm fuzzies and fond sentiments by the end I kind of felt like I was drowning in it.  Sure, it makes you feel good inside to see the things you believe about friendship, love, family, and being who you really are regurgitated so blatantly on a page, but it doesn’t challenge you or make you think.  Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom is a great book for teens who may need to see a happy ending come out of a ‘gay in small-town middle America’ story, but I don’t think that it’s going to change anyone’s mind in regards to their stance on sexuality.  And that’s okay!  Not every book needs to be the book that challenges the way people think, and sometimes people really need the support and to feel good at the end of the day, but it was all a bit too hug-it-out for me.

The “ripped-from-the-headlines” story that Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom was based on concerned a Mississippi student, Constance, whose high school prom was cancelled after the school informed her she could not attend prom with a girl, or wearing a tux.  You can read a short ACLU summary here.  Now, admittedly, I don’t know the gritty details of this story, but I had a hard time swallowing a lot of the events in Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom.  For example, the school does nothing when Tessa’s locker is repeatedly vandalized, to the point that her school work (and presumably) textbooks are destroyed.  In fact, they seem to support the vandalism, and even the custodian will do nothing to help clean the locker indicating that she deserved it.  The school suspends students who openly support Tessa, and indicate that they will attempt to negatively affect students’ acceptance and scholarships into colleges as a result.  I find it pretty tough to believe that professionals in this situation, regardless of personal beliefs, would openly support and participate in this type of bullying of any student for any reason.  I find it particularly hard to believe that not a single adult in this school seems to have stood up for this student.   Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom was so busy highlighting the negative to make it all that much bigger of a turnaround by the end that they diminished the positive to an unrealistic level.  

My final nitpick is that they used fake brand names close to but not quite the same as the real thing—I hate when books do this.  Can someone explain this to me?  Is this a result of not wanting/having to pay some sort of fee for mentioning Twilight and Good Morning America?  Because honestly?  It just makes the whole book feel like a knock-off brand to me too.  And I don’t care what people try to tell you, knock-offs are pretty much never as good as the name brand.

I will close in saying that there were some great, positive aspects to this book, and I think a lot of readers will love it.  I’d even recommend it if I met the right person for it.  Tessa’s family was wonderful, and my favorite character in the book was Luke’s mom who was downright awesome.  Luke was a bit of a douchenozzle, but as I’ve gone on long enough I suppose I shouldn’t go off on him too, especially since he spends so much time trying to make up for himself.  At any rate, don’t take my review as the end-all-be-all of Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom.  I’ve included links to some more positive reviews to give you some rounding.

Likelihood that I'll be back for more:  I think I’ve pretty well determined that not only was this book not really my thing, this type of book isn’t really my thing.  To the point that I’ve considered crossing books like Will Grayson, Will Grayson off my list, because I’m pretty sure it just won’t click because of the narrative style.

Recommended for: LGBT teeens, contemporary fans, people who don’t physically cringe or gag over things like grand gestures and prom.

Real life repercussions of reading this book:  I just want to share this response to “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay” that came out last week.  I feel like it brought up a lot of the same issues as Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom, but in a way that made me think and feel more than this book was able to.

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Review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

Title: The Miseducation of Cameron Post [Amazon|GoodReads]
Author: Emily M. Danforth [Website|Twitter|Facebook]
Standing: Stand alone novel.
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT
Published: February 7th, 2012 by Balzer & Bray
Format: Hardcover; 480 pages.
Source: Borrowed from my local library.
Challenge: Completely Contemp Challenge/Debut Author Challenge

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief she’ll never have to tell them that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief soon turns to heartbreak, as Cam is forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and not making waves, and Cam becomes an expert at this—especially at avoiding any questions about her sexuality.

Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. To Cam’s surprise, she and Coley become best friends—while Cam secretly dreams of something more. Just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, her secret is exposed. Ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she’s not quite sure who that is.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

As young adult readers, it’s somewhat rare for us to run into a book that’s more than 400 pages long, and when we do, I feel like those books fall into one of three categories.  There are those lengthy YA books that are so engrossing and quick paced that you just gobble them up without ever noticing the length (see Grave Mercy), there are those that you feel could have had 100+ pages cut and have been better for it (see Partials), and then, there are those that are worth consuming slowly, taking in each word and phrase as it comes because every one of them has been carefully considered and placed to enrich the story.  The Miseducation of Cameron Post is this third kind of book.  I’ll admit I was intimidated by its girth, but I found every moment that I spent reading filling me up in a way that hearty wheat bread can fill your belly--with nourishment and substance.  

Now, I’ll admit, a lot of my attachment to The Miseducation of Cameron Post arose from the fact that this book, more than any other I have ever read, exemplifies my childhood.  If you want to know what it was like growing up in small town Wyoming in the 90s, not too far from Billings, Montana--it’s not all that different from growing up in small town Miles City, not too far from Billings, Montana.  Cameron and I went to the same mall to do school shopping, we stop at the same airport, and more importantly, our towns share the same businesses, people, and atmosphere.  I cannot tell you how badly I was craving Taco Johns every time it was mentioned, and I am so sad for all of you that don’t live in the mountain states and know its glory (you know, as glorious as a Mexican fast food chain can be).  When Emily M. Danforth wrote of thunderheads gathering on the horizon, I could smell it, and feel the hot, dry summer air.  We played with firecrackers, bought gas at Conoco, bought crafts at Ben Franklin’s, we had kids wearing those blue FFA jackets at school; to this day I miss Schwan’s single-serve pizzas and push pops.  I further bonded with Cameron because we were both swimmers who hung out largely with boys, and had lost parents at twelve (thankfully, in my case, not both).  Despite what I felt was a very personal attachment to this book, I don’t think you need to have one to enjoy it.  Danforth creates such a strong image of Miles City, and God’s Promise, that any reader will feel immersed.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a coming of age story in the truest sense of the term.  We follow Cameron from the time that she is twelve, until she is seventeen (or near enough).  I loved seeing Cameron come into her own as a person, realize who she was, and fumble with her sense of self in the same way that every teen experiences.  For Cameron, much of this is focused on the fact that she is a lesbian, but it didn’t have to be--this story would have been just as compelling if she’d been strait.  Certainly, this book will speak to any teens who feel trapped in a situation, their family, their town, and need to find themselves to decide how best to manage their future.  I am not meaning to diminish the importance of The Miseducation of Cameron Post as a work of LGBT literature, merely stating that I think this is a work that could influence anyone, the LGBT aspect is not the only way readers will relate to this book.

Cameron Post herself is one of my new literary best friends.  I love this girl.  She’s a bit of a klepto, which I never understood, but other than that we bonded hard core.  I love that to her, her sexuality isn’t a choice, a political statement, or a counter-culture movement--it’s just who she is.  So many adults in her life reacted to her as if she were acting out, when in reality she was just being a kid, and being who she was.  The sad fact that those she loved most had no idea how to love those parts of Cameron they didn’t agree with or understand broke my heart.

I think it is easy for those many people who live in very liberal areas to look unkindly and with harsh judgement at evangelical Christians such as much of Cameron’s town.  When you only experience these people through the bubble that is media, and not through personal experience, it becomes so easy to write them off as horrible people because of their judgements on homosexuals.  This has always been a tough position for me.  Much of my hometown, and many people that I love dearly share these views.  Their adamant belief that homosexuality equates to damnation doesn’t change the fact that they are often wonderful, caring, heartfelt people.  What Cameron’s family does to her, they do because they are trying to help, and because they love her.  I can respect that, and so can Cameron.  That doesn’t make it right, but I appreciate so much that Emily M. Danforth did strive to show these people as caring, and helpless to understand because of their beliefs.  There was no outspoken rebellion against Christianity in general, only an acknowledgement that the methods used in this particular case were flawed, and doomed from the start--you can’t cure something that isn’t a sickness.  Because of this treatment, I hope that those who avoid books with religious themes are not put off by The Misedcuation of Cameron Post.  It is not preachy either for or against the nature/nurture arguments of homosexuality, it is the story of a girl finding and accepting herself in a time and place where so many obstacles stand in her way.

Likelihood that I'll be back for more: This is one of the strongest debuts I’ve read in 2012, definitely the strongest contemporary debut.  I am so glad that Emily M. Danforth told this story.  I know it was not strictly autobiographical, but I also know it was deeply personal, and I have the utmost respect for her because of this.  I will without question read her next work.

Recommended for:  People who enjoyed The Girls of No Return, or movies like Saved! and But I’m a Cheerleader.  I would recommend this book as an amazing coming of age story, and not just for the LGBT crowd, for anyone.

Real life repercussions of reading this book: I’m kind of making it a meteorological goal to experience thundersnow sometime in my lifetime.  I love thunderstorms, and I love snow, so I’m not sure I can imagine a cooler weather phenomenon (no terrible pun intended).

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Review: The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin

Title: The Girls of No Return [Amazon|GoodReads]
Author: Erin Saldin
Standing: Stand alone novel.
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Published: February 1st, 2012 by Scholastic Inc.
Format: Hardcover; 348 pages.  
Source: Borrowed from my local library.
Challenge: Debut Author Challenge

I know I need to tell my story--our story--but I don’t know how.  Because the truth, see--it’s a messy thing.  Sometimes the only way to clean it up is to hurtle through each decision you made, trying to find the one that changed everything.  Maybe then you can start to fix it.

The Girls of No Return, Erin Saldin’s debut, was not what I expected.  I expected my heart to be pounding, my adrenaline to be rushing, and to be affected by it on a visceral level.  It didn’t happen that way.  Instead, Lida’s story drew me in slowly (very slowly...we’re talking you better have some perseverance and patience because the first half of this book is extremely subdued), chewed me up, and spit me back out again reflecting on women and our relationships to one another in ways that I had not expected.  

Our story begins at the end--with an epilogue.  Lida is determined to tell her story, reveal her Thing.  There are two mysteries, two events to uncover.  The Thing that brought her to Alice Marshall School, deep in the River of No Return Wilderness Area of Idaho, and the Thing that sent her home.  The school is Lida’s chance at redemption.  Alice Marshall is not quite reform school, maybe more reform school-lite, where troubled girls are given a chance to make peace with their past and form a brighter future.  Lida is determined to skate by, tucked away in her own solitude, but the surprising allure of the glamorous Gia, and the persistence of Lida’s bunk mates Boone and Jules work to draw her out.  Soon Lida finds herself pulled in various directions, unsure of her loyalties and feelings--she never realized she could cause so much damage to anyone besides herself.

Like The Girls of No Return in general, I really had to ease in to liking Lida.  She was soooooo convinced that everyone but her was beautiful, and she felt that her problems were bigger than theirs, like she was some unique butterfly who’d had such a harder go of things than every other girl that ended up at Alice Marshall.  And I really don’t think she ever moved beyond this point of view.  Luckily, I did, and so did the story.  I spent the last half of the book with my guts twisting in horror for this girl.  Lida is so vulnerable, so easily manipulated, and so unaware of her own feelings that it hurts to read.

Lida finds herself in the middle of a battle of wills between two girls, Boone and Gia.  Boone is rough around the edges and quick to bite.  She’s renowned at Alice Marshall for ‘welcoming’ the girls as they arrive, and is the only one among them without a safety net out in the real world.  Gia is beautiful, mysterious, and quick to rule to roost.  She wraps Lida around her fingers, understanding the way Lida feels about her even though Lida herself doesn’t really seem to get that her desires for Gia’s attention are more than platonic.  She does so much to draw Lida out of her shell, but when Lida tries to dig under Gia’s surface, Gia balks.  Gia accuses Lida of so many behaviors she herself is guilty of, claiming Lida knows everything about her, when in reality Lida knows nothing.

The Girls of No Return was a very powerful reflection of the relationships girls have with one another.  Initially, I kept thinking that these problems weren’t big enough, or exciting enough, and then I realized that they were more real.  These are the horrible things teen girls really do to one another.  I think the thing that saddened me the most was this--there was next to no male presence in this book, and still, a man almost entirely defines what goes down in the wilderness.  I hate this reality, that women can be so cruel, manipulative, and horrible to one another for such simple reasons.

In the end, I appreciate how The Girls of No Return affected me.  It was a slow, but powerful story that unfolded in a way that jerked at my emotional core.  There may have been no tears, but I certainly had some nice long thoughts about why I’ve never had many close female friends.

Likelihood that I'll be back for more: I would love to check out whatever Saldin writes next.  The Girls of No Return has been compared to Speak and Cut.  While I didn’t think it was as strong as Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, I am interested in checking out Patricia McCormick's Cut.

Recommended for:  Girls (or women) who are going through a rough time, those who enjoy outdoorsy stories (though it wasn’t as outdoorsy as I was expecting), fans of Speak.

Real life repercussions of reading this book:  One of the sites in this book is a fire watch tower up in the wilderness.  In the Big Horns, where I grew up, we have our own fire watch tower that you can hike to for an amazing view. I thought it might be fun to share something from my own experience that would be similar to what Lida saw:

Looking up at the fire tower pre-climb.

View of Meadowlark lake from the fire tower.

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Series Review: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

The Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr [Website|Twitter|Facebook] includes Wicked Lovely (2007), Ink Exchange (2008), Fragile Eternity (2009), Radiant Shadows (2010), and Darkest Mercy (2011).

One of my favorite things about reading is picking up a series after it's already complete and simply devouring it.  I did this with Wicked Lovely, reading these 5 books over 3 months (which is incredibly fast for me, I don't read series back to back), usually each in a day.  Instead of providing individual reviews, I thought I would talk a bit about the series as a whole in a spoiler free kinda way!  I discovered Melissa Marr last summer when my friend Alyssa read and recommended Graveminder.  Since that time, I've become a huge fan girl--not only does she write fantastic books, she's a huge library supporter, makes fantastic book recommendations, and is absolutely lovely to her fans.  Seriously.  Authors like Melissa Marr become my favorite when in this day and age of social media and constant exposure they are able to garner my utmost respect as a person and professional beyond what they put on the page.

The Wicked Lovely books were my first faery books.  I know a lot of people balk at fairies (or even more at faeries), but I was immediately engrossed at the dark, manipulative, dangerous world of the fae in this series.  Wicked Lovely tells the story of the faery courts, High, Dark, Summer and Winter, focusing on a time of political and personal upheaval.  We're provided a window to understand this world through human characters set against the backdrop of a grimy and cold Huntsdale, and I personally found many of the turns happily unexpected.  Each book focuses on different characters, but the stories all intertwine and rely on one another, culminating in Darkest Mercy where all of the threads collide.  By far, my favorite of the series was Radiant Shadows, followed by Ink Exchange.  These were the two darkest in the series, and I loved that Melissa Marr used them to feature characters that I had previously not cared about or actively disliked and made me love them.  I love finding myself rooting for those I used to root against (Jamie Lannister, anyone?), and the style of this series turned every story around for you to see it in a new way.  

I highly recommend this series, it contains powerful and unexpected relationships, the struggle between one's duty and one's heart, and some sweet tattoos and piercings.  If you've read the series, I'd love to hear which book was your favorite! 

Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Title: Beauty Queens [Amazon|GoodReads]
Author: Libba Bray [Website|Twitter|Facebook]
Standing: Stand alone novel.
Genre: Young Adult, Humor, Speculative Fiction
Published: May 24th, 2011 by Scholastic Press
Format: Audiobook; 14.5 hours.  Read by Libba Bray
Source: Borrowed from my local library.

According to the acknowledgements, David Levithan at one point says to Libba Bray, “A plane full of beauty queens crashes on a desert island and....go!”  And she did.  

Here’s a rough outline of what to expect from the audiobook of Beauty Queens: The girls of Drop Dead Gorgeous get plane-wrecked on an island containing an evil volcano lair and meet sexy reality T.V. pirates. Kind of awesome, huh?  


Let’s meet the (surviving) Miss Teen Dream contestants!

Miss New Hampshire:

Adina is working as an undercover investigative journalist bent on taking the pageant down and exposing it for the misogynistic racket it is.  She’s overly caustic, sarcastic, jaded, bitter, and full of contempt for Miss Teen Dream and the other girls.

Miss Nebraska:

Don’t be fooled by Mary Lou’s extreme Fargo accent (sorry Libba Bray, people from Nebraska do not talk like that.  Neither do people from Fargo for that matter...my cousins from Wisconsin kinda do...), she’s not just the country girl next door.  Mary Lou observes all the Midwest niceties, but deep down she’s a wild one longing for adventures as a pirate queen.

Miss Texas:

Taylor is Texan through and through, and she takes her Miss Teen Dream seriously.  Deadly seriously.  She insists on continuing pageant prep, non-offensive language, chipper can-do attitudes, and no shenanigans.  There’s always been a Miss Texas in the Top 10, and Taylor plans to go all the way.

Miss Colorado:

Nicole is a pre-pre med student in it to place and garner some scholarship money.  Let’s face it, Nicole is black, and the only African American woman to ever win Miss Team Dream went down in shame.  It’s not likely to happen again.  

Miss California:

Shanti is fighting Nicole for the minority vote, presenting her case as the well-adjusted child of Indian immigrants.  She knows how to make papadon in the tradition of her grandmother, she has charming stories about her parents, her talent is traditional Indian dance.  And she hates when you call her “Bollywood”.  

Miss Michigan:

Jennifer is a juvie-turned-beauty-queen project of her guidance counsellor, and Miss Teen Dream is supposed to set her on a better path.  Jennifer is our mechanically inclined, comic-book loving lesbian, whose personal motto is: WWWWD?  What Would Wonder Woman Do?

Miss Illinois:

Sossi gets the handicapped vote for being hearing impaired (though she’s annoyed that people won’t just up and say ‘deaf’).  She is amazeballs because she started an all-hearing impaired dance troupe named Helen Kellerbration.  Puns may make terrible jokes, but they make fantastic group/team/roller derby names.

Miss Rhode Island:

Petra is the tall, big-handed, hormonally challenged secretive girl from the Northeast.  She knows every lyric to every Boys Will Be Boys song, has a heart of gold and patience to boot.  As a nearly 6’ girl myself, I find the insinuations that Petra is “big” to be a bit insulting, but yes, finding size 11 heals that don’t look like ass is hard.  

Miss Mississippi:

Tiara may not be able to spell Mississippi (or douche), but she represents with pride.  She’s the sweet resident ditz, who’s not nearly as dumb as she comes off (some of the time), and depending on your opinion of kittens you will either want to put her in your pocket or see her drown.

Miss Alabama:

Essentially, Brittani is Tiara’s twin, though she seems slightly more intelligent.  Also, non-essentially, she’s more-or-less a filler character.  So let’s address the other fillers while we’re at it:

Miss Arkansas, Miss New Mexico, Miss Ohio, and Miss Montana:

They’re just here for the show people.  They’re the group of friends whose experience on the island we don’t much acknowledge.  Oh and Miss New Mexico has a tray stuck in her forehead.

Looking for a rep of another state?  Too bad, they’re dead.  Check the floating bodies in the water or the frying ones in the plane fire.  Let’s get on with the story...

Up front, these beauty queens are pretty easy to pass off as a largely unlikable bunch.  Adina, and Taylor in particular, as the two extremes of pageantry garner the least sympathies.  However, as the story draws on, it’s easy to see that there is much more to these young women.  Each of them has entered for her own reasons, presenting us with a myriad of bad stereotypes and heartwarming truisms.  This book held an interesting dynamic for me, as I am not sure that the characters grew as much as I did while reading about them.  The girls certainly did change and come into their own, but my initial opinions of each of them changed more than they actually did  as I got to know them.  At the end of the book, there wasn’t a one of them I wasn’t rooting for, and luckily Beauty Queens wraps up with an awesome 80s-style flash-forward montage where we get to see how the girls grow up.

This book especially shined in its audiobook form, read by the author herself evoking the spirit of Effie Trinket.  Libba Bray was excellent at the accents (with the exception of the aforementioned Miss Nebraska, but a villain who talks like Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory more than made up for this), and voices were done in a way that made the speaker instantly identifiable despite the amount of characters.  The footnotes had the fun chime of an airplane announcement, and the commercial interruptions came with fitting music.  I find the use of footnotes in general to be annoying, but the chime certainly helped, and I tend to overuse parenthesis, so who am I to talk?  Besides, there was this:

Footnote 50: Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.

That said, Beauty Queens was positively dripping in satire.  I was torn between just enjoying the ride, and feeling I needed to think about what was being said with the thick and abundant placement of “The Corporation”.  In the end, I’m left wondering if Bray was really trying to say something with this book, or if it was all in good fun and just a laugh.  I truly believe I would have enjoyed this book more as a teen myself, when I was myself every bit as caustic and sarcastic as Adina (okay, so I still am, but I think I’m less jaded now).  

In the end, I felt that Beauty Queens had all of the quirkiness of a Bryan Fuller show without the charm.  It's a whole new world of pretty, people.

Likelihood that I'll be back for more: 100%.  Libba Bray’s upcoming book, The Diviners was on my Top Ten list of books I’m looking forward to reading in 2011.  I’m wondering which Libba Bray we’ll see here, the Going Bovine/Beauty Queens Libba Bray, or the Gemma Doyle Libba Bray.  Personally, I am hoping that she is able to find a happy medium between the two, and given the setting of the 1920s and promised ridiculousness, I’m thinking it just might be possible.

Recommended for:  People who like their satire laid on thick, or those who might enjoy a literary mocumentary. People who enjoyed Going Bovine.

Real life repercussions of reading this book:  The repeated use of the phrase “Beauty is pain.” gave me some horrible flashbacks to my childhood babysitter who used to say this as she French braided my unruly curly hair so tight I cried.