What it's about (from Goodreads): 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.
What I learned: Libba Bray writes my kind of humor. I love the snarky bits, the making fun of reality TV, the industrialization of EVERYTHING, the beauty product commercials. It's laugh-out-loud funny and I hardly ever laugh out loud at books. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I would watch some of the reality shows mentioned in the book. They are so over the top yet not that far from the current line-up on some networks (ahem, TLC and MTV. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!). I love how Ms. Bray both makes the obsession with reality TV hilarious and a little shaming at the same time. You don't want to admit that it's fascinating to watch other people go through incredibly strange and weird things, but you do anyway.
I went into this book without having read a single thing about it: I hadn't read the summary on Goodreads or even the inside of the front flap! I knew I would love the basic premise and I wanted to be completely surprised by everything, which is almost impossible to do now that almost every book I read has been reviewed (at least once) by any of the myriad book blogs I follow.
(SPOILER SECTION, highlight to read)
I loved the story of the beauty queens but was less enamored of the pirates and their ridiculously fake reality show. I kind of felt that the pirates were just thrown in there so the book could have some romance since it's a teen book and every YA book has romance in it. I'd actually like to read a book sometime that has hardly any or even none. The Corporation and MoMo B. ChaCha stuff was entertaining but again I almost would have preferred the whole book just to be about the beauty queens. It would have ended up being a completely different book, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I loved that MoMo B. ChaCha was obviously a caricature of Kim Jong Il (who, if you don't think about it too much, is hilarious if you read about him). I didn't see the need for ChaCha and Ladybird's relationship and some of the details at the end of the book were hard for me to picture (like how the stage was set up in relation to the compound in the mountain and ChaCha's boat... it was all a bit confusing for me). I also wasn't a fan of how Taylor just went crazy after getting shot with the tranquilizer darts. It seemed like a strange way to kind of get her out of the main action.
Anyway, what I learned from this book...epilogues can be great. I loved this book's epilogue though I have generally hated others in the past (Harry Potter and Mockingjay, anyone?) It was actually one of my favorite parts and I loved seeing where all the beauty queens ended up. Obviously this whole book is a little far-fetched and full of fantastical things (which I generally love) but I do wish more of the book had just focused on the beauty queens and their survival on the island (still interspersed with commercials, of course, because I loved those!). I love how Bray made you think about feminism and femininity and self-sufficiency without making you feel hit over the head with a lesson. I also thought about the way advertising is so sneakily ingrained in our lives and how it's almost impossible to escape. I definitely want to be more careful about noticing what the world tells me I should wear, drink, eat, like, do and enjoy, instead focusing on what I really want to wear, drink, eat, like, do and enjoy.
I went into this book without having read a single thing about it: I hadn't read the summary on Goodreads or even the inside of the front flap! I knew I would love the basic premise and I wanted to be completely surprised by everything, which is almost impossible to do now that almost every book I read has been reviewed (at least once) by any of the myriad book blogs I follow.
(SPOILER SECTION, highlight to read)
I loved the story of the beauty queens but was less enamored of the pirates and their ridiculously fake reality show. I kind of felt that the pirates were just thrown in there so the book could have some romance since it's a teen book and every YA book has romance in it. I'd actually like to read a book sometime that has hardly any or even none. The Corporation and MoMo B. ChaCha stuff was entertaining but again I almost would have preferred the whole book just to be about the beauty queens. It would have ended up being a completely different book, but that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I loved that MoMo B. ChaCha was obviously a caricature of Kim Jong Il (who, if you don't think about it too much, is hilarious if you read about him). I didn't see the need for ChaCha and Ladybird's relationship and some of the details at the end of the book were hard for me to picture (like how the stage was set up in relation to the compound in the mountain and ChaCha's boat... it was all a bit confusing for me). I also wasn't a fan of how Taylor just went crazy after getting shot with the tranquilizer darts. It seemed like a strange way to kind of get her out of the main action.
Anyway, what I learned from this book...epilogues can be great. I loved this book's epilogue though I have generally hated others in the past (Harry Potter and Mockingjay, anyone?) It was actually one of my favorite parts and I loved seeing where all the beauty queens ended up. Obviously this whole book is a little far-fetched and full of fantastical things (which I generally love) but I do wish more of the book had just focused on the beauty queens and their survival on the island (still interspersed with commercials, of course, because I loved those!). I love how Bray made you think about feminism and femininity and self-sufficiency without making you feel hit over the head with a lesson. I also thought about the way advertising is so sneakily ingrained in our lives and how it's almost impossible to escape. I definitely want to be more careful about noticing what the world tells me I should wear, drink, eat, like, do and enjoy, instead focusing on what I really want to wear, drink, eat, like, do and enjoy.
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