Title: Beauty Queens

Author: Libby Bray

Publish Date: May 24, 2011

Publisher: Scholastic, Inc

Format: Audiobook

Length: 14 hours, 8 minutes

Source: Sunflower OverDrive Library 

Date Read: April 25-26, 2020

Review

A fun romp in the jungle that tackles a lot of patriarchial claptrap that teen girls have to deal with on a daily basis. You wouldn't think it would be as funny and biting if you just read the premise of the book, but it is a witty and yet searing look at societal standards. I just want to take this moment and say I STAN the one, the only, Taylor Renee Crystal Hawkins, Miss Texas with every fiber of my being. 

Here's the deal - I read this book for my IRL book club; I borrowed the hardback version from the library before the lockdown happened. But I couldn't get through page one of chapter two; I just had a block where I couldn't get into the book or even in fiction. So it sat on my bedside table until the weekend before our monthly meeting. I decided to try the audio version so that I could get through the book before the meeting. I can't stress this enough - LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK! Seriously, there are a lot of characters and it helps with having different accents and the chapter break "ads". 

Other than Miss Texas, I really loved Miss California Ashanti, Miss Colorado Nicole, and Miss Michigan Jennifer were my favorites. The only girl I couldn't stand was Miss New Hampshire Adina - god, she was the most "woke Twitter" personality but she couldn't lead her own head out of a paper bag. Taylor was designed to be the ying to Adina's yang, but Taylor overshadowed Adina and Adina came out looking petty and sour. Then there are the pirates. Boy/young men pirates from a reality tv show. They were wonderful partners for the girls. 

It's ridiculous on paper, but the plot and characters come alive via smart written story and a great narrator (the author herself). The accent change from Miss California in one scene must have been hard to record. I will say that the villain's voice sounded an awful like Sarah Palin, which just added to my gleeful joy in listening to the story, especially when the villain gets her ending.

Highly recommend on audio for a fluffy, laughing good time on a weekend.

***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley and Harper Voyager!***

The first thing that drew me to this book was the cover. I mean, look at it. It is probably one of the most gorgeous book covers that I have ever seen. Then the title. The Sisters Grimm. Immediately my mind is drawn to fairy tales. I love fairy tales. And I love fairy tell re-tellings. But this book is a perfect example of a good idea that got beaten to death with poor writing and poor execution.

***SPOILER ALERT: Be aware, this is a spoilery review. The ranty ones typically are.

The basic idea of this book is that a demon (Wilhelm I think his name was) has fathered thousands of sisters Grimm on earth. I am not sure if this is metaphysical thing or a biological thing, but some of the daughters have mothers who are also Grimm sisters. So, ew, I imagine at some point in the history of this world we had some incest. As children, the Grimm sisters can come and go from “Everywhere”, a magical forest, as they please. But as they age they forget this place until about a month before their 18th birthday, which is when they start to remember and get their powers back. Wilhelm also has soldiers, who are transformed into babies from stars (WTF?), and their life’s mission is to kill Grimm sisters on their 18th birthdays. Then something about the Grimm sisters who survive have to choose good or evil and then their father kills them if they choose good and then….well, the author didn’t both to tell me what happens then.

That was my first big problem with this book. Despite being 400 pages long, the author didn’t bother to explain anything to me. I have no idea how the world works, how the magic works, why things are this way, or what the rules are. I am not even clear on what the sisters’ powers are. Scarlet can start fires, Liyana can telepathically listen in on other people’s minds, Bea can transform things with her mind. And I have no idea what Goldie can do except mentally tell people what to do and they sometimes listen. And all of them have other powers that randomly appear and don’t seem to relate to anything else they can do, at all.

Since we’re talking about the girls, let’s talk about how utterly devoid of personality all of them are. I honestly could not tell the difference between any of them until someone used their name or until Bea or Liyana would occasionally throw in a non-English word into an otherwise entirely English conversation….seemingly in order to remind me that they were the book’s representation of other ethnicities and cultures.

Now let’s talk about the technicals of the writing. It was bad. It was the single most confusing book that I have ever read. There are SO MANY narrators. Everywhere (yes the forest is a narrator), Goldie, Scarlet, Bea, Liyana, Leo, Wilhelm, Liyana’s aunt….and I am pretty sure there were a few others in there that I’m forgetting too. Between these narrators, some of them are told in first person, some in second person, and some in third person. And the narrator changes approximately every page and a half. With me so far? Now let’s throw in some chapters in the past for some extra fun so that we have past tense, present tense, and future tense. It was so difficult to read. It gave me a headache when I actually tried to concentrate on who was speaking and what time period we were in.

I also don’t appreciate what the author did to poor Vali. He was a nice guy. And despite the book’s message of empowerment, all Bea did was belittle the poor guy. She called him fat, called him all sorts of other names, made fun of him for being a virgin and then ultimately killed him! Then she has the nerve to get upset about him dying because she didn’t mean to. Way to go Bea, you bullied him to death. The author did him dirty and I am still mad about it.

I finally gave up on this book after 245 pages. My brain couldn’t handle it anymore and I found that I really didn’t care how it ends. Leo is not going to kill Goldie, Goldie will probably choose good. Liyana and Scarlet will probably die because they were entirely expendable in the rest of the book so why not? And Bea will probably live and choose evil. Or maybe all four of them survive and choose good in order to challenge their father. But really, who cares? The author hasn’t made me care about their upcoming battle or told me why the outcome matters, so why should I spend any more of my time finding out?

I'm not the hugest fan of noir, but there is something about the mid-century hardboiled mysteries set in L.A. that is just so evocative. It's a place I've never been, but that I recognize from dozens (hundreds) of depictions in book and film, to which Harry Bosch is the rightful heir.

I was completely underwhelmed by The Thin Man, when we read it as a Halloween bingo group read. But, I've read some Chandler, and liked it pretty well, and Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black blew my miind - in a good way. So, maybe I am a bigger fan than I can really recognize.

Because I really enjoyed this book. Taking a real oil spill from 1969 as the jumping off point, this is a complicated tale of greed and murder, with complex roots in a different disaster years before. The characters are California archetypes - the aging patriarch (with a much younger companion), disappointed in his children, the adult children who have never quite managed the dizzying levels of success that their father achieved, and who are slowly but inexorably dissipating the family fortune, the little-girl-lost granddaughter who married beneath her, and whose sadness makes her only more beautiful. It's all sort of annoying, but also there's a reason that these are archetypes.

And isn't it fascinating that we've been having these same environmental conflicts for 50 years, and still, always, industry prevails. America is open for business (and for plunder). Privatize profits, socialize losses, and let no man get in the way of the wealthy extracting maximum wealth from the resources that should, by right, belong to us all.

OK, that took a turn. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I couldn't get a fix on Archer, so I'm obviously going to have to read more.

@Archaeolibrary, @ELTenenbaum, #Fantasy, #YoungAdult, #FairytaleRetelling, 3 out of 5 (good)

Human Again is the fourth book in the End of Ever After series of fairy tale retellings. This one is told from the Beast's perspective and is in past tense, almost as if he reminisces about his past.

This is also the hardest review of the four books I've yet had to write! Why? Because there are so many parts of this that I loved and yet other parts just didn't tick the boxes for me. The 'Beast' himself? I loved him. You got an in-depth view on his childhood and just what made him into a 'Beast'. For myself, it was never quite clear if he did indeed change into something else or if he just was a human man enraged.

I think it was his family that annoyed me more than anything. Yes, I know that's how you're supposed to feel but it was more along the lines of Amelia. She was old enough to understand how her father was with Azahr but was content to just go along and believe what she is told without actually finding out if it was true or not.

I'm very pleased this was told by Azahr. Too many times, this story is from Belle's, or Kiara as she is here, point of view.

This isn't my favourite of the series but I am certainly happy to have read it. I have no hesitation in recommending either this book or the series but I would recommend you read them in order. Although these are companion books, it will definitely make more sense that was.

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!

She used light words that didn’t say what she was thinking. He was doing the same. They leaned on each other and everything important between them went unsaid.

While you absolutely could read this book without reading the rest in the series, you absolutely do not want to. The romance is a little weak, the mystery threads dominate and I had problems feeling like I "knew" Raoul. Do not look for really any movement in the romance front until after 50%.