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.
One of the most important things to know about me is that I'm not a fan of satire. When movies or shows are satirical, it's almost an immediate turn off and they end up being some of my most disliked series. So it's safe to say, not only did I not know this book was filled to the brim with satire but I wouldn't even have picked it up if I did. Which would've been quite disappointing considering this is one of the few books I had been dying to read for years. Imagine my nervousness once I realized what exactly I had just picked up.
This book has managed to change my mind about satire as a genre, at least for books. I really enjoyed seeing the ridiculousness of the characters and situations because they called out and paralleled with our society. It was so refreshing to see things that are important but often considered too 'taboo' to talk about, particularly in YA books, finally being written out and expressed. This book covered topics such as feminism, sexuality, racism, identity, capitalism to name a few. They were covered in such a way that the impact of them were felt while also keeping them lighthearted enough to stay on task and on brand with the book.
Feminism was one of the big themes centered. The great thing about it that I think separates this book from a lot of other feminist novels is that it really focuses on the fact that you can be completely girly, maybe even shallow, without doing a disservice to feminism or your gender. The girls were so badass and prepared but they were also ditzy and materialistic and that is not a paradox, you can be both. Which I think is not nearly touched on enough so it was so great to see Libba Bray take this stance and push it throughout the novel.
There were a lot of characters in this book. Multiple beauty queens and not to mention the other characters that are brought about as the book carried on. However, something that is rarely seen in other books, this large amount of characters was not confusing at all. Each character was unique: they each spoke differently (accents were very noticeable even in writing in this book) and had different personalities which helped individualize every character. Each character was given their time to shine. Even characters outside of the girls, which I personally really liked because it was like seeing one situation in multiple different angles.
One of the few annoying parts I felt with this book was one of our main characters, Adina. I've found that while Bray's books are overall celebrates the different ways girls can be feminists, she has the habit of writing her main characters as a 'not-like-other-girls' girl. I have found that I hate reading those types of characters. There's always character development but it's just not enough. It's annoying the judgement Adina passed throughout nearly the whole novel and even more annoying that none of the other girls were able to explain to her the errors of her judgement. It's not one of the issues that is corrected within the novel which I think is a drawback to the point she was trying to make for the entire story.
The writing style was great! I laughed out loud and my jaw dropped in so many scenes because it was just that entertaining! It started off pretty slow in the beginning so I had to force myself to pick it up but it got captivating as you kept reading towards the middle. However, at the end, the big climax scene, it didn't hold my attention that much to the point where I couldn't stop reading it which I felt was kind of a let down because you want to be feeling that way in the climax. I also felt like sometimes the sentences were a little choppy. Another thing that I kind of didn't like much was that there was a scene where Bray made it kind of a bedtime story within the book and while she found a way to integrate it to make sense, it still felt really out of place with how the rest of the story was written.
The story itself was very immersive with things like commercials and footnotes throughout the whole story. It read it like a movie where you can imagine where the fade outs/scene changes would be. That, along with so many connections to real life made the story as a whole very captivating.
Everyone in this story has secrets, which is something that makes the story so interesting. What's even better is that they're all revealed at a perfect pace so it doesn't feel too info dumpy with them all revealed at once. There's so many interesting plot twists. It's predictable to an extent but the story as a whole isn't. There a big plot twists that are so unpredictable and really made me gasp out loud. But I will admit there are smaller twists that you can definitely see coming. The ones that aren't though, I loved how deep they were. Bray managed to create a plot while simultaneously writing about important topics that need to be addressed like capitalism and conservation because sadly are rarely ever talked about in books.
I really struggled with the rating for this book between a 4 or 3.5 because while I loved the majority of the book, there was still a big disconnect I felt from loving this book and its characters which would merit it a 4 star book. However, just the way this book handled subjects I don't see very often in books and the way I could see things that, politically, are very important to me being highlighted in such an intricate and fun way elevated it to that 4 stars it would, otherwise, not have.
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