"Beauty Queens"

"Beauty Queens" by Libba Bray
Hardcover: 390 pages
Published: Scholastic Press (May 24, 2011)

Book Description:
From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.
Teen beauty queens. A "Lost"-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to email. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

This book was a really great fun read!  I read this in no time, and had fun doing so.  If you are in the mood for a good beach/summer read, then pick this one up!

The storyline reads as that of a movie or television show including commercial breaks.  Very interesting that way, too.  Was fun to see how these beauty queen characters handled being stranded on an island.  You can almost imagine these events actually happening to teenage beauty queen contestants with hilarious results!  A very fun and funny book!

Cloaked

"Cloaked" by Alex Flinn
Hardcover: 341 pages
Published: Harper Collins (February 8th, 2011)

Description:
I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.
It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.
There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.
Don't believe me? I didn't believe it either. But you'll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got cloaked.

Hmmm...where to begin on this review?  There were times when I liked this book, but mostly I thought it was too cheesy and fairytale-like.  I know that this is the whole point of this book, and if you like that kind of stuff then you'll enjoy it.  I tend to prefer books that are at least believable in their fiction.  This was an interesting read, and I didn't stop reading it.  It took me a while tho, since I wasn't anticipating reading more.  I probably won't read any others by this author, although her book "Beastly" is wildly popular and made into a movie.  I guess if you liked that movie, then you might like this book also.