Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2013
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
When Becky Randle's mother dies, she's whisked from her trailer park home to New York. There she meets Tom Kelly, the world's top designer, who presents Becky with an impossible offer: He'll design three dresses to transform the very average Becky into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
Soon Becky is remade as Rebecca - pure five-alarm hotness to the outside world and an awkward mess of cankles and split ends when she's alone. With Rebecca's remarkable beauty as her passport, soon Becky's life resembles a fairy tale. She stars in a movie, VOGUE calls, and she starts to date Prince Gregory, heir to the English throne. That's when everything crumbles. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But the idea of a prince looking past Rebecca's blinding beauty to see the real girl inside? There's not enough magic in the world.
Defiant, naughty, and impossibly fun, Gorgeous answers a question that bewilders us all: Just who the hell IS that in the mirror?
"Starred Review. Rudnick casts a knowing eye on our obsession with fame, brand names, and royalty to create a feel-good story about getting what you want without letting beauty blind you to what's real. Ages 14–up." - Publishers Weekly
"While Becky's voice and cultural referents are far too sophisticated and mature for a teenager raised in a Missouri trailer park, her fears and hopes are universal. A Cinderella story with a difference, Becky's journey to reconcile her inner household drudge and outer princess starts where most fairy tales end." - Kirkus
"I loved Paul Rudnick's Gorgeous, which I found impossible to put down. When I wasn't laughing out loud (which was often), I was wiping away a tiny tear. Becky Randle will soon become the queen of your heart." - Meg Cabot
"Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth and love and great wicked humor, whom we ignore at our peril." - David Sedaris
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Paul Rudnick is a frequent contributer to the New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly, as well as an obie award-winning playwright, and the screenwriter for Addams Family Values and In & Out. this is his first young adult novel
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