Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg

Title: Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality

Author: Elizabeth Eulberg

Publish Date: March 1, 2013

Publisher: Point

Pages: 272

Buy the Book: Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Rating: ★★★★★

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.

I honestly didn't know what I would think of this book when I first began reading it but it blew me away. If there was a six star rating on Goodreads or even on my blog, I would be giving it to this book. This novel is very true to today's world, where our societies place a huge emphasis on beauty, perfection, and using unnatural products to gain 'natural' looks. The problem I see is the fact that I see myself in Lexi. I see my insecurities, my problems, and my fears through the eyes of a girl who is just trying to figure herself in a world where all you get is mixed signals. I see my friends and my family members in Lexi because she is a very real character. 

Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg is the story of Lexi, a girl who has watched her sister be paraded around in pageants and objectified by judges. She has been told for years that she has a great personality but isn't as pretty as her seven year-old sister. After putting up with this treatment for years, she decides to do a makeover and see if anyone will notice her. She just might lose herself along the way. Is there really anything worthwhile in trying to fit into what society wants? What good can come from hours of makeup, picking out clothes, and doing hair? Sure, maybe it might be worth it. But not if you forget yourself in what everyone else wants from you.

Lexi, the main character, is the girl with a great personality and let's be honest, who wants to be described as having a great personality? It's like someone saying, "Well, yeah she is ugly but she has a great personality." Like one cancels out the other. People seem to think that she isn't pretty but she isn't ugly because she doesn't wear makeup or spend hours on her hair. She is average by everyone else's standards and it makes her extremely insecure. All she wants is for someone to love her for who she is, without the makeup and the hair care products. Battling the urge to overeat, she is constantly dieting as though that will somehow make her more appealing but that doesn't seem to be enough. She decides to try out makeup and nicer clothes and in the processes she loses herself. What makes me happy is that by the end she realizes something that most women don't for most of their lives. She is beautiful on the inside and she can be happy about that. At least she is really beautiful instead of fake with a poisonous inside that those popular girls. I see my insecurities in her and I admire her triumphs. I can only hope that I will be like her when I grow up.

Mackenzie is Lexi's younger sister and the resident pageant diva of this novel. At first, I couldn't see her as anything but a spoiled brat who doesn't respect anyone. I know differently now. She may seem like she thinks she is above everyone else and maybe at times she really does but there is something more to her. Just like her sister, she wants love and affection, attention and beauty. Her father seems to reject her and her mother seems to think that pageants are the greatest thing in the world. So, to get the attention she craves, she does what her mother wants and becomes a girl that she shouldn't want to be. She just might lose her childhood and her hope. But isn't that what it takes to be beautiful? I wish it didn't.

I'm mildly disgusted with the parents in this story and it is sad that there are parents like that. I have met parents like them. Her father is built up as some great man during the story but when I finally saw him in the story, I was disappointed. Selfish seems to be the best word to describe him. He left just after Mackenzie's birth and never seemed to try to get to know his youngest daughter. He didn't try to stop what his ex-wife did to his daughters. He seemed to be too caught up in his own life to care about his own children. But he definitely wasn't the worst parent in the story, just the most disappointing. Her mom seems to be addicted -- obsessed -- with pageants and she spends all of their money on funding this addiction that she has to feed. She pays little attention to Lexi except when she needs something from her. She reminds me a lot of a drug addict when she is challenged about pageants. She gets violent, defensive, and so very angry. It's strange to think that pageantry just might be as addicting as that.

Benny and Cam are Lexi's best friends and they accept her for who she is. Benny is probably the hardest on her though but only because he knows she is unhappy with how her life is at the beginning. He is gay, which is a hard thing to be in Texas, and people seem to pick on him because of his weight as well. Hardly anyone seems to know about his attraction to men, especially his parents, and those that do love him for who he is without all the pretenses. Cam is happy with who she is and is protective of her two best friends. She can tell when Lexi seems to be losing herself to this notion of perfection. She is definitely the smart one out of this group of misfits and that makes her lovable.

Logan, the crush of the novel, is dating the prettiest girl in all of the pageants. He is just friends with Lexi until she does her makeover to fit in with everyone else and that is when he starts to treat her differently. But is he really going to be Lexi's prince? Well, sometimes things are best left to the imagination and Lexi learns that the hard way. The one decent guy in the whole story is Taylor and I honestly didn't know what to think of him when he was first introduced. I hope that I can one day find a guy like Taylor and not lose him. He is genuine and noticed Lexi without her makeover. Sometimes, it's the guy we never notice that is really worth our time.

It's such an amazing novel. Read it.