Bookended By Beauty Queens

Author: Victoria Marshal
Goodreads Rating: 4.50
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Pages: 276 


I won this book as part of Firstreads because I used to be a beauty queen, and I absolutely loved the crown on the cover and wished that I could have one like it. I will admit, I blindly entered this book because of the title and the crown, and when I won I was a little caught off guard by the content. It was still a fun read and was one of the quickest reads I've had in awhile (aside from Uglies: Shay's Story). I managed to read this book in one day while on a four hour road trip. 


Goodreads synopses:


Angie Palmer likes her life just the way it is–private. She has no desire to entangle herself in complex friendships, and her relationship with her two beauty queen sisters is safely distant. 

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always go as planned. 

When disaster strikes her Grandmother, Angie takes her into her home. A life with Grandma comes a world full of changes, and new friends, including Val, a drag queen with hopes of being the next US-Gay Beauty Pageant winner. Angie is determined to keep Val at a distance. Val has an instinct for knowing what is in Angie heart. 

Just as Angie gets comfortable with Grandma living with her, a budding friendship with Val, and a new romantic interest, everything takes an unexpected turn. 

Val becomes the victim of a violent crime and ends up in a coma. Angie begins a struggle against Val’s family who wants to remove their son from life support. 

Suddenly her private life becomes very public, and her world becomes a media circus. Angie is caught in a clash between religious beliefs and gay rights. 

Through many twists and turns, Angie discovers a new appreciation for family, friends, and love. 


My review after the jump.

This book was really cute, and fun to read. I'll admit that I was a little thrown by the concept of drag queens, but it turned out to make the book a lot more fun. As the synopses states, Angie takes in her grandmother after a fire ruins her apartment. It seems absurd that it took three days for her sisters to tell her that there was even a fire. 


I liked that Angie was a book publisher because it's something that I would like to do (since I do love reading). My favorite part of her job was that her grandmother, Anne, would read some of the books that Angie would reject. When Val was in the hospital, I loved that Anne would read them out loud to him.


It did seem rather abrupt, the time period between when Angie and Val met and when he was attacked (It seemed like only a few days) but then again it was hard to tell the passage of time in this book. Usually there is something that indicates how much time has passed, but there were very few clues.


This was not the only problem that came up in this book. Before launching into all of my problems with this book, let me start by saying that I contacted the author and let her know about some of the discrepancies that I found. I appreciated how receptive Victoria Marshal was to my suggestions and so I raised my rating. Many of the problems that I found should have been caught by her three editors, but were not. 


At the start of the book, Anne was referred to as Angie's maternal grandmother, but later it was stated that she was the girls paternal grandmother. There was also a later issue, but I don't want to point it out because you know me and giving away plot points. There were other spelling issues, missing words and wrong tenses. All things that an editor should have caught. 


Given how quick a read it was, I think that it is worth it to check out. It also brings up a lot of points that cause you to think what side would you be on? Val's parents want to pull the plug on his life support, but does that mean they should be able to because they don't believe in his life choices? Do Angie and Anne have the right to prolong his life because they believe thats what he would have wanted? Even though they only knew him for a few days? Maybe weeks? It makes you think what you would do for your friends.