Preview Gorgeous
A book that will make you see yourself clearly for the first time.
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?
"When I wasn't laughing out loud (which was often), I was wiping away a tiny tear." - Meg Cabot
"Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth and love and great wicked humor, whom we ignore at our peril." - David Sedaris
"[G]leefully wacky and irreverent . . . readers are treated to Rudnick's considerable talents as a satirist as he uproariously eviscerates our celebrity-mad, class-conscious, appearance-obsessed, reality-TV-vapid culture with puckish delight . . . a wicked good time, with moments both outlandish and touching. And as a summer beach read? Well, it's perfect." - Libba Bray, New York Times Book Review
"Rudnick's first Y.A. novel is full of magic, snark, style, heart, and hilarity." - The Atlantic Wire
Huffington Post's Five Things We're Into This Week
"Paul Rudnick's young adult debut, Gorgeous, is not a fairy tale. 'Because in real life, fairy tales always end badly.' What it is is a satire sharp as a stiletto heel that takes on celebrity culture, the fashion industry, consumerism, and princess stories. Oh, and it's wickedly hilarious." - Boston Globe
"With writing that's hilarious, profane, and profound (often within a single sentence), 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." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Acute, wickedly funny observations on appearance and identity punctuate this sprawling, caustic fairy tale that cheerfully skewers the fashion and film worlds and their celebrity-culture spawn. . . . 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 Reviews
About the AuthorPaul 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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