Queen Veda of Ran does not believe in growing old gracefully. In fact she will shun anything that makes her look or feel less than the fairest in the land including her daughter, Ana.
Luckily Ana has both beauty and intelligence. She realizes the way to remain close to her beloved mother is to make herself ugly. Ana does everything she can to maintain her new disheveled appearance: She doesn't bathe for days, doesn't wash or brush her hair, and bites her nails down to the quick. Her plan works. She has finally won her mother's love.
Then Ana realizes all the lovely young girls of Ran are being sent to the prestigious Academy for Girls, including Ana's best friend, Pell. When Ana's told she must go too, she resists. She doesn't want to leave her loving mother. But Ana has no choice. She goes and once there learns how potent a drug beauty can be.
There are enough teen books kicking around these days that do a really good job of exploring some really interesting ideas that I had high hopes for this one. It seemed like a take on Snow White that could have some good strong female messages about outer beauty vs. inner beauty, sacrificing yourself for someone else, and stepping out of others' shadows as you find your own true self. And to be fair, it did have all that. It just presented it in such a superficial way that I was left pretty unfulfilled.
For example, beauty as a potent drug? I figured that would be a metaphor. Maybe Ana would even succumb, and set some sort of catastrophe in motion that would require her to rise above it all and find her inner strength to save the day. But no. The drug was literal. There was an actual drug. Called Beauty. Which Ana herself never took. She just found out about it and then went to get some help to arrest people and get all the girls' stomachs pumped or whatever. Yawn. She didn't really learn anything except that her mom's extremely selfish and that it's OK to be pretty. Like I said, I just wanted more.
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