Beauty Queens
by Libba Bray
A plane of contestants for the Miss Teen Dream pageant crashes on a desert island. Thirteen young ladies survive. The island is infested with giant snakes, scary idols, an absence of food and beauty products, and no people. (OK: there’s an armed compound of privatized CIA agents of The Corporation on Another Part Of The Island™, but nobody told us about that.) We’re ready for Lord Of The Flies, with girls.
The great part of this pleasantly predictable frolic is the audiobook, read by the author, in fourteen accents for the thirteen Teen Dreamers. (One contestant starts out speaking Indian British, but a close encounter with the inevitable pool of quicksand leaves her returning to her native Valley Girl dialect.) Libba Bray sure can read.