Recommended Reading: Libba Bray's Beauty Queens

As many people can attest, college is not a time for pleasure reading. As much as I love to read, the past few years have been spent with my head buried in academic texts and literary works (some of which I enjoyed, but they were still for school). Now that I'm out of school - and even now that I've started my job I don't have homework - I've started to ease myself back into reading for fun.

About a month ago, my mom and I took a quick trip to new York to meet up with my current roommate and look for an apartment (the very beginning of our housing search). With two train rides on the schedule, I knew I would need something to read. I first heard about Beauty Queens on a TWoP recap of Pretty Little Liars (no shame here). As a fan of Libba Bray's Great and Terrible Beauty series I was interested to see Bray's take on a more modern subject. Beauty Queens, as you would learn from reading the back cover or perusing the summary in the Kindle store (as I did), is about a plane full of teenage pageant girls crash landing on what seems to be a desert island. But it's not just about pageants and Lost-esque islands. What really impressed me was its commentary on society, femininity, feminism and what it means to be a woman (or girl) in the modern world. It was funny, it was thought-provoking and it was the perfect read for the train (and whenever I had down time in the hotel). If you're looking for a good book to read this summer - on the subway, on the beach or in your backyard - definitely pick it up.