Beauty Queens by Libba BrayMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is the best book I’ve read this year. It is so succulently good. It has a cast of characters that each have their own distinct personalities who struggle and develop. It explores lots of important topics like sexuality, relationships, femininity, and identity. It does this while being the funniest book I have ever experienced. I say “experienced” instead of “read” because I listened to the audiobook, though it was more like a 14 hour movie. I STRONGLY suggest, actually let me make that even more clear, YOU MUST LISTEN TO THE AUDIO BOOK! It is the best audiobook I have ever listened to, by a landslide. It definitely had a big contribution to my thorough enjoyment of this book.
There are quite a lot of characters in this book, but Bray does a good job of making everyone distinct enough that it’s never too hard to remember who’s who. This is amplified even more in the audiobook because Bray (who also narrated the audiobook) read each character in a different voice. This book doesn’t really even have a super distinct main character, because everyone gets their own focus. I mean there is one that you could see as being the main character, but it’s not clear cut like how it is in other books, which is something I enjoyed. There was also some good character development I liked, which relates to the themes of this book.
I didn’t expect it to go into all the topics it ended up delving into, but it was a good time. Bray isn’t afraid to bring light to sensitive topics, and I appreciated that. The one that personally resonated with me was the discussion of femininity. I feel like a lot of girls go through this phase of hating femininity and completely disregarding it as inferior, which is something that men already do and is not something we need to do to ourselves! I myself went through my “tomboy” phase, and I hated being a girl and I wished I was a boy, and I felt great disdain toward people who were “girly girls” and who actually embraced femininity. Beauty Queens has a character kind of like this, though maybe less extreme.
She hates the beauty pageant system and she doesn’t agree with women’s beautification rituals. She thinks she’s enacting justice in speaking out against everything these girls have dedicated their lives to. She honestly really did annoy me a lot in the beginning. (view spoiler) This gave the book a bit of a rocky start, but all the characters do eventually progress and learn new things, so it was satisfying in the end. But my annoyance at the character never had time to truly come to fruition because what was actually going on in the story was just so wild and fantastic that my main focus was directed there. (view spoiler)
A lot of times people say a book is funny, and then I read it, and maybe it'll make me snicker once or twice, but Beauty Queens had me LAUGHING OUT LOUD, not once, not twice, but CONSTANTLY. This is from a mix of hilarious character interactions and the batshit insanity that is the plot of this book. An airplane of Beauty Queens crashes into a deserted island, and what ensues is so freaking crazy and wonderful. It definitely gives off “Lost” and “Lord of the Flies” vibes, though I definitely enjoyed Beauty Queens more than I did either of those. The sense of humor was also very reminiscent of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so if you enjoyed that book you’ll have a blast with Beauty Queens as well. The humor is also largely derived from taking a satirical view at beauty standards among other things. If there’s one type of humor that always gets me, it’s satire/parody. Good shit.
The only downfall of the book would be that around the middle, something happens that creates a distinct BEFORE the event and AFTER the event feeling to the book. I feel like I can’t really say what it is because of spoilers, even though it’s kind of hard because it’s a huge thing that changes the flow of the book. I didn’t really like what this “event” introduced. So at this time I became less interested in the book, and I didn’t listen to it for a while. But because I had borrowed this from the library, the return date was looming and that was the real driving force for me to keep listening. So that bothered me for a little bit. In the end—And I’m trying to be really careful with how I say this—it ended up being less of a bother. I like how I put it in my notes: “Slowed down with the [event], didn’t enjoy as much, but then went back to regular scheduled programming.” I’m going to have to create a whole spoiler section because I actually kind of have a lot to say about this. Don’t read my reading notes because I accidentally spoiled it because I was so distressed I didn’t think about it being a spoiler.
(view spoiler)
The best part of this had to be the audiobook itself. It was so well produced, so much effort went into it and it absolutely payed off. A lot of times people will praise audiobooks just because they’re narrated by the author, but my own experience has left me with a slight distaste for author-read audiobooks. These people are authors. They write books. They are not actors (well, most of the time). Do not make them voice act! The main perpetrators I’m referring to here are Jeanette Walls and her memoir The Glass Castle and Tina Fey and her memoir Bossypants.
In this case, Tina Fey actually IS an actor, though do understand that acting in film/TV is a lot different than voice acting. Both these authors were monotone and unenthusiastic as hell, and their reading didn’t do anything to pique my interest. This is exactly what I would expect from people trying to do someone else’s profession! The concept of people reading their own memoirs definitely has a nice ring to it, but if these people don’t know how to properly and engagingly read-aloud, it just doesn’t work. So in the audiobook introduction when I heard the voice say she’s Libba Bray and that she was going to read her own book, I was immediately disappointed. This wasn’t going to end well.
Boy was I wrong! Bray did an absolutely marvelous job! Especially considering that voice acting isn't her profession. I mean, yeah there were some lines that could have been said with a little more “oomph” here and there, and the voices/dialects might’ve slipped from time to time, but it was still honestly just so impressive.
Something Bray did when writing her book is that she didn’t only focus on the girls on the island, she also put in chapters where we zoom out and see what else is going on in the world. This book has commercial breaks. COMMERCIAL BREAKS, PEOPLE! And these worked extraordinarily well in audiobook format. There was actual music and sound effects and it was just such a good time. And they’re not just stupid random bullshit either—which is what I thought they were at first—they’re actually a genius way of world building and addressing the themes of the novel. Honestly, LISTEN TO THIS AUDIOBOOK! It’s such a good experience, I’m sure I would not have loved this book as much as I did if I had read it instead. That being said, they could not have made such a good audiobook without great material to read from. So really, reading or listening is good, but listening truely feels like a movie. The audiobook also has a bonus interview with Libba Bray at the end, which was actually really awesome, I enjoyed it a lot.
Beauty Queens was a super duper fun time. Though it did have that problem section for me, it was not enough to deter me from overall absolutely loving this book. I recommend it to everyone, especially the audiobook. I actually really want to buy the book for myself now, since I enjoyed it so much. Lots of good things were addressed in this book, some I didn’t really delve into here but that were still covered really well and I think would be good for you to read! Also, if you just want to laugh your ass off, this is your book.
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