Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality - Elizabeth Eulberg

Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg
Publisher: Point
Publication Date: March 1, 2013
Source/Format: Netgalley (Thanks Scholastic!) || e-ARC

[I received this book from the publisher. This in no way affects the thoughts expressed in my review.]

Everybody loves Lexi. She's popular, smart, funny...but she's never been one of those girls, the pretty ones who get all the attention from guys. And on top of that, her seven-year-old sister, Mackenzie, is a terror in a tiara, and part of a pageant scene where she gets praised for her beauty (with the help of fake hair and tons of makeup).

Lexi's sick of it. She's sick of being the girl who hears about kisses instead of getting them. She's sick of being ignored by her longtime crush, Logan. She's sick of being taken for granted by her pageant-obsessed mom. And she's sick of having all her family's money wasted on a phony pursuit of perfection.

The time has come for Lexi to step out from the sidelines. Girls without great personalities aren't going to know what hit them. Because Lexi's going to play the beauty game - and she's in it to win it. (from Goodreads)

I am a girl with a “great personality”. I’ve known this about myself since high school, when the boys would like me, but like-like my friends. I’ll let you in on a little secret though – it’s always been something I’m happy about. Sure, I might have wished that I got more attention from the opposite sex or even just from other people in general. But I liked being the girl who everyone could get along with or be friends with. It gave me free rein to concentrate on writing and on school and on other fun obsessions, like boy bands and books.

So when I first heard about The Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality, it was a sure bet I was interested in seeing just what Lexi would do about her “great personality” reputation. What I didn’t bargain on was discovering that this book was not only about a GP (great personality) girl who snagged the attention she craved; it was also about friendships and family and finding complete confidence in being the best version of you. The author manages to weave all these elements into a cohesive plot, and I found myself speeding through the pages until I reached the end.

Lexi is funny and intelligent, and it was easy to like her immediately. This doesn’t surprise me, as she is supposed to have that “great personality” touted in the title. I was all for her embracing her best self, as it’s fairly obvious at the start that she’s hiding a few things, but I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan when she went overboard with her transformation. Even if I didn’t like her attitude/personality transplant, I could understand it – everyone has that desire to simply be liked and noticed. I do like how, eventually, she realizes that she can be a girl with a great personality, but one who does make an effort to put her best foot forward in the world, in terms of appearance and otherwise.

It’s no surprise that Lexi is quickly swayed to embrace her physical transformation. It brings her attention and lends her an air of confidence she’s never had before, all things that she needs in the face of the extremely sad home situation she lives with. Her father is absent from her life, her sister is the pride and focus of the family and her mother… her mother is just the worst, contributing to the stress, low self-esteem and hidden anger Lexi harbors. 

Lexi becomes someone that makes me very proud at the end of the book, and I liked that. Her confidence in who she was and her conviction about what was right for her certainly made me want to applaud when I finished. We all need that one life-changing moment where we realized that it’s okay to be yourself, but that we need to attempt to be the best version we can be.

Of course, in this book, there are the boys. I quite liked Taylor from the very beginning, as Logan struck me as a typical popular kid. The romance isn’t the main focus of this book, but of course it played a part in Lexi discovering what she really wanted versus the things she had thought she wanted.

And then there are Lexi’s two amazing best friends, Benny and Cam. They’re such a fun trio together, and I like how they both were supportive of Lexi in different ways. Benny is the one who encourages her to embark on this journey where she fixes up her appearance, while Cam on the other hand reminds Lexi that there’s nothing more important than who she is versus what she looks like. I would like to have Cam and Benny in my own life, as they pretty much rocked at being Lexi’s friends.

The book shows the reader what pageants are like, particularly the ones held for kids. It was both fascinating and horrifying to witness how the pageants worked and what was asked of the kids, particularly when it came to the amount of work, practice and even money spent on them. It simply seemed crazy to me that some people would pursue this way of life to the point of financial instability (like Lexi’s mom, for instance), especially considering the fact that these are kids we’re talking about. But for the purposes of the book, it worked.

In the end, the only major issue I had in this book was the way that there was no resolution when it came to Lexi’s mother or father. I felt like these two were the loose threads that deserved to be further explored and possibly tied up neatly, and it was weird to end the book feeling like I wanted to still yell at her mother.

I really enjoyed reading The Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality, more for Lexi’s journey than for anything else. It was fun to see how changing up her appearance kick-stated a change in her mindset and confidence level, and I was definitely rooting for her. Even though things felt a bit unresolved at the end with her parents, I’m choosing to believe in only the best for Lexi and her future, and I’m sure you will too.