We Were Beautiful

April 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-This is a quirky novel about a teenage girl who in the aftermath of a tragedy faces grief, isolation, and harmful beauty standards. After an accident that results in the death of her sister and leaves her with physical and psychological scars, Mia Hopkins is left drowning in complicated emotions with no aid in sight. Her mother has abandoned her, her father can barely look at her, and she is shipped off to stay with her formidable grandmother in New York City, where Mia finds herself adopted into a group of young misfits. Through the acceptance of her peers, she begins to break free of her self-imposed purgatory, work through her own grief, and accept the faults of the adults around her, realizing that nobody's perfect, especially when it comes to handling death. This plot-driven story gracefully and wittily approaches the subject of grief through a first-person narrative. After she is disfigured in the accident, Mia is unable to see her own beauty, but she eventually explores and challenges personal and societal ideals of beauty, allowing readers to experience her thoughts and insecurities. In order to grow and heal, Mia learns from secondary characters and comes to understand her own emotions. VERDICT This a wonderfully clever book for teens who are looking for a dynamic, thought-provoking story with enough whimsy to keep them enthralled.-Haley Amendt, Hinton Municipal Library, Alberta

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2019
Grades 8-11 Fifteen-year-old Mia's social-emotional plate is full. Her face is severely scarred from a car crash that killed her older sister, and her father, who has become withdrawn, is sending her to New York for the summer to stay with her estranged grandmother. On Mia's first day working at an NYC diner, she is befriended by the owner's granddaughter, Fig, a blue-haired girl her age who loves adventures. Fig's friends welcome her, including the cute, artistic Cooper, whose past contains its own secret battles. Through interactions with her new friends and their street art events, Mia re-embraces photography and learns that she's not the only one with both visible and deep, personal burdens. Gradually, she begins to recover memories about the crash, allowing healing to take place. The juxtaposition between Mia's anguish and Fig's lust for life is clear and genuine, and Mia's easy inclusion offers enormous hope to those whose life is consumed by hiding their imperfections. Mia's first-person narrative is neither sentimental nor melodramatic, striking just the right balance of emotion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)