REVIEW for Beauty Queens

Thank you to the wonderful people at Scholastic Canada for sending me this book.

TITLE:               Beauty Queens

AUTHOR:         Libba Bray

GENRE:            YA

RATING:          4 Stars

Okay, first off, this is not your typical "YA" novel - by that I mean it is not your standard chick lit and it is not your standard "undead/zombie/vampire" book either.  Of course, from the cover, I knew that this was going to be one crazy ride and I was not mistaken.

For all intents and purposes, I should have hated this book.  Its completely over the top and the "crazy" part starts at line one of chapter one - where 50 beauty pageant contestants end up in a plane crash and those who surive vie for "leadership" on the island, all the while, continuing to "practice" their pageant skill sets.

Amazingly, I loved it.  I think because the author did not hesitate to completely go over the top - there was no wishy-washy storylines here.  The author threw just about everything in here, including pirate ships and bad, bad people who are plotting to do very bad things. 

The girls bring their own "individuality" to the island and this does spill out into the plot line and while I can't say that I liked or connected with any particular one, I thought that each girl brought her own brand of something in order to add to the comedy and to the general storyline.

I did find myself having a bit of a hard time following some of the action because, well - there is alot going on all at the same time.  At times, I also found that there was too much of everything, too many funny sequences scenes which made me feel as though the novel was written as a parody of itself which made me feel as though the author was laughing at her readers a little bit. I am not sure about that last part, but it is something that i felt as I found myself moving from page to page.

This book is completely over the top and to be honest, I would not be able to read an entire series based on these characters, but I did enjoy this romp into sillyness very much, this time around.