Author:Elizabeth EulbergEdition: hardcoverSeries: noneReleased Date: March 1st, 2013Publisher: Point
Goodreads / Amazon A hilarious new novel from Elizabeth Eulberg about taking the wall out of the wallflower so she can bloom.
Don't mess with a girl with a great personality!
Everybody loves Lexi. She's popular, smart, funny...but she's never been one of those girls, the pretty ones who get all the attention from guys. And on top of that, her seven-year-old sister, Mackenzie, is a terror in a tiara, and part of a pageant scene where she gets praised for her beauty (with the help of fake hair and tons of makeup).
Lexi's sick of it. She's sick of being the girl who hears about kisses instead of getting them. She's sick of being ignored by her longtime crush, Logan. She's sick of being taken for granted by her pageant-obsessed mom. And she's sick of having all her family's money wasted on a phony pursuit of perfection.
The time has come for Lexi to step out from the sidelines. Girls without great personalities aren't going to know what hit them. Because Lexi's going to play the beauty game - and she's in it to win it.
Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality is a fun growing-up type of novel, about struggle, finding yourself, and family issues. Lexi always is stuck on the sidelines, with her obese mother and her younger sister who competes in pageants every week. She rarely sees her father anymore, and her family doesn't have much money since all of it gets spent on pageants. Meanwhile, at school Lexi has lots of friends, and she's always told she has a great personality. She has never heard that she's pretty and a guy has never asked her out before. After a deal, Lexi decides to dress up and a couple guys becoming interested, besides the one guy she wants: Logan.
This novel reminded me a little bit of Toddlers & Tiaras mixed with Mean Girls. First of all, Lexi's sister, Mackenzie, is a beast in the beginning. All she cares about is being the center of her mom's attention and competing in all these pageants. She throws tantrums when Lexi starts to look pretty and buy herself new things. Honestly, I hated her in the beginning. I don't know how Lexi could put up with it. As the novel progresses, I started to like Mackenzie as she started to have one-on-one conversations and they pretty much started conspiring against their mother.
But anyways, so Lexi wants to turn pretty. Her mom and sister didn't like it in the beginning because the money that Lexi is EARNING, she decides to use on herself rather than spend money on a new dress for her sister's pageant. But Lexi made a bet with her gay friend Bennie. If she wears make-up and dresses like the cute girl she is, then Bennie has to ask out this guy Chris. So they agree and Bennie and Chris because super uber cute, and then Lexi gets ALLL the guys.
Well, just kidding. This one guy likes her, Taylor. For some odd reason I keep picturing him as a Thomas McDonnell.... I have no clue why. But anyways, they actually become quite a cute couple. But then there's still one guy that Lexi can't get her mind off of. That guy is Logan, who's dating another girl that does pageants. So Lexi tries to make him jealous and all this good stuff.
Lexi was a pretty cool character. After all, we share the same name. I thought throughout the book she made really good characters, except about her and Taylor in the end. But she was like any other girl you know at your school. She was funny, seems like she would be easy to talk to, and overall a great main character. I want more contemporary characters like her!
Also, I really like the whole deal Bennie and Lexi had. It was a cute little banter that they had going on, and I enjoyed the fact that Bennie was gay and was sometimes self-conscious about it. Sometimes there are gay best friends in YA fiction, but too often are they the flamboyant look-at-me gays. I liked Bennie's personality.
The ending of this was perfect, because Lexi actually finds herself rather then falls for a boy. She figures out who she is and who she wants to be for the rest of her life, and I think that's the best message the novel could give.
Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality was a quick and fun read that I would recommend to anyone looking for something light and funny. I mean, it wasn't that crying laughter, but it was more of that smiling funny type of stuff, if you know what I mean. If I were you, I'd give this one a try!