*
by Libba Bray
Three black shirts moved through, guns drawn. Miss Ohio used her fingers to count down.There’s so much I love about this book, and that passage was just a couple. The parallel between the guerilla warfare and the pageant, the totally spot-on note about being called bitches, the fact that Miss New Mexico still has an airline tray embedded in her forehead… You have read this book already, right?
“Now!” she shouted. The arrows zipped down through the growth, clipping fronds whsk-whsk-whsk. One found its mark in a guard’s thigh. His AK-47 went off as he fell to the ground, grabbing at the thin stake of wood.
“Reload!” Miss Ohio shouted, ducking.
A second hail of arrows arched out in a flawless display. It was like the opening number of the Miss Teen Dream Pageant with every girl knowing her steps, every girl in perfect sync with her sisters. Miss Arkansas launched her coconut at a guard’s head and he went down hard.
Miss Ohio dropped the ground. “Take the guns,” she barked. The other girls scrambled down past the unconscious guard and the other two men who had taken arrows in the legs and butt.
“You bitches!” a guard snarled at Miss Montana.
“Excuse me? You try to kill us, we defend ourselves, and we get called bitches? So typical!” Miss New Mexico head-butted the man, knocking him out with her tray.
“Thanks,” Miss Montana said.
“Don’t mention it.”
