I read this book over a year ago and it currently still my favorite recent-ish read. It’s absolutely hilarious—I laughed out loud over and over. And it’s also genius. It cleverly highlights the ridiculous expectations society has on teen girls and women in general. The humor focuses on using the absurd and the book plays with stereotypes to great comic effect. Bray manages to create realistic and believable characters using US state stereotypes as the template. Eventually, she turns everything on its head.

In the book, contestants in a teen beauty pageant crash land on a desert island. Only thirteen of them survive, representing a little bit of everything. One Indian-American, one African-American, a Jewish girl, and a bunch of white WASPy girls hailing from states all over the country. Miss Texas—Taylor—is awesome. She takes charge the way a bold Texan should (even making them woo-hoo enthusiastically), making sure to keep up the propriety these girls are used to: “Miss Montana? Is that the way a Miss Teen Dream sits, all slutty like that with her hoo-hoo showing?”

One of the girls spends the duration with an airline serving tray embedded in her forehead. Taylor admonishes her for being upset—“let’s not get all down in the bummer basement where the creepy things live.”

When they’re taking stock of the skills and knowledge they have, Jennifer tells everyone that her family traditions are alcoholism, dysfunction, and “anything you can make from government cheese.”

But my favorite is Adina, Miss New Hampshire, who entered the contest as a joke and is my personal hero. She missed the memo about the societal rule that a respectable girl doesn’t say anything about herself that might be construed as bragging.

I won’t spoil the fun for you, but I have to say when the hot pirates show up, I thought I would die from laughing.

One last thing: I listened to the audiobook, which was one of the best ones I’ve ever listened to. It was narrated by the author herself, and she does different voices for all the characters–often, I find this annoying, but here it totally works (maybe because I trust her to know what she was imagining when she wrote it).

You can buy Beauty Queens on Amazon