Read:
Bad Hair Day by Lauren Myracle - This story was very, very weird. I think she tried to use extreme weirdness for impact, but it didn't make the story good, just strange. I like strange things, but this seemed like a cop-out for thinking of a really interesting story.

Cheekbones by Ellen Wittlinger - I liked this one much more than the first story. The ending of this one was a little too cliche, but the rest of the story was really interesting - it offers a peek at the world of modeling, as well as the whole mother/daughter drama and search for identity.

This book has a bunch of short stories about beautiful young girls who try and find there way. My Favorite story was Farang which means "Foreigner". It was about a girl named Jennifer, who moves to a new country and does everything she can to fit in and look like the other girls. Although she tries as hard as she can, the locals do not like Farangs. Through all of the hate, she has one friend named Nikki, who is a native, and buys Jennifer new clothes and books that is popular at the time.

I really liked this book because it taught me that not everyone is perfect. Also, everyone has their own imperfections that you could be self-conscious of, but that's what makes us all unique and I believe that we should be proud of it! I recommend this book to anyone who likes to talk about fashion and beauty, even if it isn't all that pretty.

Fe Martinez
Anonymous
Book Review
Such A Pretty Face
Edited by Ann Angel
Such a Pretty Face has really nicely described short stories that portray beauty in a beautiful and understanding way. In one story, a girl realizes that in the process of maintaining outer beauty and popularity, many people get hurt, but only after her sister betrayed her to please her popular friends. She would rather not have outer beauty if meant hurting the people she cared about. Since these stories were written by individual people, many other people can relate to them. Ann Angel and all the writers of these stories did a great job connecting with the audience and guiding others to true beauty.

Even with all these wonderful stories that can be used in real life situations, I still dropped the book. “‘ I fantasized I was masturbating.’” That seems like a excellent reason why. In that story, a young man was finally fell in love, it was a shame that it happened after his car crash and she was his nurse. All the late night conversations, while the nurse put ointment, grew them closer together. The young man told her a story of his dare with his girlfriend. He claimed that the morphine made him a little crazy and told about all the intimate details. That one story ruined the whole book and its theme of true beauty. Details and words like those are not necessary to get a point a across. That one story made me put the book away. True and honest beauty lies in that book that thousands of people try to find, but those words will keep it hidden.

I don’t read many short stories these days, and I’d almost forgotten how enjoyable they can be. I liked the theme of this anthology, too: beauty and our various perceptions, prejudices, and mixed feelings about it. Some stories affected me more than others, but they were all very good, and I liked the variety of voices and situations. I guess the variety of voices was one of the most useful things for me right now, because I’m trying to figure out how to work with voice and what makes a voice compelling, interesting, unique, engaging, real. ( )