Beauty...the book

Beauty by Nancy Butcher. This is the latest book I've read besides re-reading Beautiful Sun book 1 currently.

Beauty is a mix between a modern story of a girl trying to please her mother and a medieval (or earlier) story of a queen and the princess who didn't wanted to be royal. If this sounds interesting to you, you may enjoy Beauty. Ana finds out early in her life that her mother, Queen Veda, does not like any challengers to her beauty. So Ana decides to make herself ugly in order to stay on her mother's good side. Yet all of her hard work (not bathing, eating pastries and dressing less than average, let alone, less than royalty) comes to nothing. Queen Veda seems to have better things to do than spend any time with her daughter. Since her husband died, Veda has to run the kingdom herself. But the book says little to nothing about the run of the kingdom as it focuses on Veda's overwhelming desire to be the most beautiful in the kingdom. So much so she's willing to kill for it. As the story goes along we find the main character and lots of other young girls (beautiful young girls) sent off to an academy that turns out to be a lot different than Ana originally thought. Soon Ana is faced with a situation that pulls her not only out of her ugliness, but also reveals the true leadership that she's hoping will never fall on her, to become queen.

The story isn't too bad, for a YA fiction. It's not so much the story but the delivery that spoils this fic. It's so long an drawn out for probably half the book. Seriously, the book has lots of background, lots of what ifs, ands, and buts...but no real storyline until about halfway through. You know it's leading up to something but nothing is actually HAPPENING and that ticked me off for most of this read. When something does finally happen, well the moral of the story soon degrades. You think it's about how there is beauty more than skin deep or that it's ok not to center your life on makeup, clothes, etc. Yet at the end of the book you are left wondering what the author is trying to communicate about beauty. The main character seems to yearn and want that surface beauty so much, it really kills the initial thought that the book would display beauty as more than surface or not something to covet. There is also a mystery character; well he's a mystery to me at least. They don't explain much about the beauty consultant and well he's kind of creepy. There's another part that is creepy in the book but gives me my favorite line from the story, "But she was already dead." Trust me, it's cool in an eerie way.

There are a couple of other things I don't quite get with this story either, but I can bypass all of it and just say, it's a not too bad story if you just want to read something. But truly, if you just want to read something (and get hooked, fall in love and maybe find direction for your own life while being entertained) I really suggest you pick up Beautiful Sun: Boy Craze. Purchase it at http://lulu.com/4God