Beauty Tips For Girls by Margaret Montgomery

Blurb

 

What happens when bad advice is given at the worst possible time? Katy is an impressionable teenager obsessed with Misty magazine and its beauty tips. With her once-glamorous mother, Corinne, spiralling into self-destruction, she turns to Misty for advice, with disastrous but often hilarious consequences. Only Katy’s teacher, Jane, has the insight to put her pupil back on track, but she has a story of her own to tell. Can these three very different women each find their own voice in a society obsessed with perfection?

Source

I've received a copy of this book from the publisher. 

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Review

Katy is an insecure fifteen year old girl. Because she has nobody to talk to she writes letters to a magazine she uses as her main source of information. Misty magazine is filled with beauty tips and celebrity news. Eventually she gets her answers, but are they really very helpful? Katy's teacher Jane notices that something isn't right, but she doesn't come into action, because she has too many personal problems she doesn't want to deal with. Katy's father is too busy shouting at his wife and sometimes also daughter. Katy's mother is an alcoholic and the only thing she's interested in is drinking and he's in over his head.

Katy meets someone online she really likes. She tries to find a time to meet him. He's living in London which is where the clinic for plastic surgery is that she's been meaning to visit. Katy wants to have surgery, because she's getting rude texts from someone about her body. She's a lovely girl, but as nobody is there to tell her that she has no idea. What will happen when there's nobody to stop Katy's plans? 

I think this book is a great example as there are many other Katy's in the world, wonderful girls who are vulnerable, because nobody really pays attention to them. When they meet the wrong kind of person things can spiral out of control pretty quickly. I think Margaret Montgomery has chosen a perfect topic for her novel. The story is great, it has a good flow, everything that happens, happens for a reason. It's believable and very well put together. 

I loved the letters, the adverts, the snippets of information in this book. The fact that the reader gets to see Katy's story from the point of view of several of the people around her gives the reader such a good insight into the situation. It's a warning for parents and teachers who are too self absorbed or too wrapped up in their own problems to notice. I think it's fabulous that besides that warning this is a strong, great, enjoyable story as well.