I have a love/hate relationship with pageants. I love all of the glitz and glamour but hate that there's not a whole lot of individuality to it. I love that they give girls a chance to become assertive, but I hate (REALLY hate) that it involves so much liberal application of spray tans and unrealistic amounts of makeup. The pageant world is a complicated affair where there are both pros and cons, which makes it such a perfect world to satirize. They make their own stereotypes without even trying, both in the pro and anti pageant groups. 
 Where the book goes wrong is in the delivery of its message. It's so heavy handed that the reader is never really given the chance to make their own choices about beauty pageants or how women can self actualize themselves. We're given one message that's crammed down our throats so thoroughly that it's actually pretty irritating, especially considering that our main character Adina (who is thoroughly anti-pageant and never really accepts any differing viewpoints) isn't that likable of a character. It also doesn't help that there's never any satirizing of the anti-pageant viewpoint like there was the pro-pageant viewpoint. Just as there are stereotypical pageant queens who believe that the only way to greatness is through a mascara brush, there are anti-pageant people who are overly rabid in their attempts to eliminate pageants and I felt that the elimination of this is what made the book so one-sided. In Bray's good intentioned attempt to write a book about female empowerment she forgot that the most basic form of empowerment is the ability to choose for ourselves what we want to believe. If someone wants to choose to tap dance across a pageant stage in a red sequined bikini then that's her right to choose so and she shouldn't be made to feel like less of a woman because she doesn't fit someone else's idea of "enlightenment". (The reverse is also true: nobody should be made to feel that they are less of a woman because they *don't* want to tap dance in a sequined pageant bikini.) What makes all of this the more aggravating is that I know that Bray never intended for her book to come across as "all pageants are evil, you can never find yourself unless you live and think exactly as Adina does". In the afterword she's mentioned that she would watch pageants as a kid (she sounds like she views pageants in much of the same light I do), but the book came across as though she'd really only ever watched Toddlers and Tiaras. (A show featuring awful pageant parents but not representative of pageant kids and parents as a whole.) 
 There are some fun parts to this book and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't experience a few giggles during the book. I appreciate the message that the book is trying to get across and I know that there are some who will really enjoy this read. I just can't help but feel that this book didn't live up to its full potential. I did get the impression that this would have been better served in a visual format (aka: a movie), though. 
 In the end I can't help but feel that this book could have been more than what it was. I know I'm going to get comments saying I didn't "get" the book, but this book was just too one-sided for me. 
 (ARC provided by Amazon Vine)