Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

Every month, I look at Amazon's Best Books of the Month, and I try to read at least one each for YA and Middle Grade. Sometimes, this isn't a very appealing prospect, but I was pretty excited to read Gorgeous. It seemed like a perfect, breezy summer read.

Essentials:

Gorgeous
Paul Rudnick
YA

Scholastic Press, 2013

327 pages (hardcover)

It turned out to be something like Princess Diaries (Meg Cabot) meets Uglies (Scott Westerfeld), though leaning strongly towards Princess Diaries.

"When Becky Randle's mother dies, she's whisked from her trailer park home to New York. There she meets Tom Kelly, the world's top designer, who presents Becky with an impossible offer: He'll design three dresses to transform the very average Becky into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
"Soon Becky is remade as Rebecca - pure five-alarm hotness to the outside world and an awkward mess of cankles and split ends when she's alone. With Rebecca's remarkable beauty as her passport, soon Becky's life resembles a fairy tale. She stars in a movie, VOGUE calls, and she starts to date Prince Gregory, heir to the English throne. That's when everything crumbles. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But the idea of a prince looking past Rebecca's blinding beauty to see the real girl inside? There's not enough magic in the world."

By far the most intriguing thing about this book is that Becky is transformed to look like the worlds most beautiful woman - but she doesn't exactly become her. When she's alone, looking in the mirror, she looks just the same as always. Maybe as a result of this, her super model good looks don't go to her head as much as you might expect, though she does grow more confident. Being so good looking means that Becky stops holding herself back because of her looks - something that, sadly, a lot of girls and women do - but when she meets Prince Gregory, she realizes that being pretty isn't a stand in for personality. I think that realization is essential to the success of the novel. The romance isn't realistic, but it's enjoyable to read.

(Highlight below to read on - contains spoilers)
Speaking of not realistic - I was really taken aback by the twist with Tom Kelly. I couldn't buy into that part at all. The combo of the magic dresses and the princess plot already had me maxed out on suspending my disbelief, and the whole ghost thing was too much.

It's an over the top book, no question. But... I enjoyed it. I was definitely rooting for Becky all the way. She is a funny, relatable narrator, and that means the book is pretty funny, too. Her best friend, Rocher, was downright hysterical. Their friendship is one of the only things that keeps the novel grounded. (I'm not saying it's enough.)

For me, this was the definition of guilty pleasure reading. I think there are a lot of people out there who wonder what their lives would be like if they woke up one morning looking absolutely stunning. Gorgeous gives us a chance to explore that possibility, ultimately reminding us (of course) that beauty is only skin deep.

The last word: With heart and humor, Gorgeous tells an engrossing, over the top story of transformation.

Grade: B-

Doll Bones by Holly Black

Essentials:

Doll Bones
Holly Black
Middle Grade

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2013

244 pages (hardcover)

“Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they’ve been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her.

"But they are in middle school now. Zach’s father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she’s been having dreams about the Queen—and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.

"Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?”

The summary of Doll Bones was enough to interest me right away. I’d heard it was a book that managed to be truly creepy, and I was excited about the prospect of a genuinely scary story.

Doll Bones turned out not to be that story. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good book. It just isn’t the spooky read I was hoping for. To be fair, the target audience of Doll Bones is, I would say, middle schoolers, and maybe to a 12 or 13 year old it would have seemed scary. (Then again, as a seventh grader I had a lot of friends who loved the movie The Ring, so maybe not.) One reason I couldn’t buy into the creepy stuff was that Zach, the main character, is very aware of pretending. Even when I started to think, maybe something is really going on here, his doubt kept me grounded, and that isn’t an effective path to fear.

So, Doll Bones didn’t work for me as a scary story – but as a story about friendship and growing up, it was great. I remember how lost I felt the first Christmas that I didn’t want toys. Because, even though I didn’t want little kid gifts, I didn’t want grown up gifts, either. The first years of navigating that in-between, adolescent phase can be really rough, and this book captures that experience perfectly. The true artistry of the novel is the way that Zach, Poppy, and Alice deal with this transition. Each of them experiences it somewhat differently. In Zach, we see the painful, but inevitable, loss of childhood. In Poppy, we see the hurt of feeling your friends leave you behind. And in Alice, we see the torment of being under a parent’s thumb, and also the sparkling possibilities of the future.

The last word: It didn’t have me on the edge of my seat, but Doll Bones managed something far rarer – a very true-to-life glimpse into the hearts of young teens.

Grade: B+