The Accidental Beauty Queen

"The Accidental Beauty Queen is an example of women’s fiction with romantic elements and also romantic comedy. I chose it because this also seems to be a direction that a lot of publishers are going in when it comes to their romance acquisitions. I know a bit about what goes on behind the scenes because, as a librarian, buying is also a huge part of the job. When books are marketed to you and you start to hear different buzzwords you want to put your finger on the pulse of that on behalf of your readers. Teri Wilson has written for Harlequin. She has also had a few of her books adapted into Hallmark movies. She’s very popular among my own readers, so that’s one of the reasons why I selected her as one of my top five. In this book Ginny is up for Miss American Treasure. This is a pageant that her mother has previously won, so there’s pressure from the get-go. Ginny brings along her school librarian twin sister, Charlotte, for luck. Charlotte agrees to come because it a vacation and she’s a huge Harry Potter fan (it’s set in a somewhat fictionalized Orlando). But Ginny has an allergic reaction almost as soon as they get there and it’s not a pretty scene. Her face is a disaster (pageant-wise) and the doctor tells her, ‘Guess what? You’re going to be out a couple of days.’ She’s like, ‘a couple of days! This is my last chance. What am I going to do? ’ So she pleads with her sister Charlotte to pose as her until she recovers. So Charlotte has to go through this makeover. Think Miss Congeniality meets The Parent Trap , with the twins trading places. Charlotte very, very reluctantly agrees. There’s a little bit of backstory, because she’s trying to get over why she called off her engagement. She meets one of the pageant judges on the stairwell with their respective dogs, and they begin to flirt with one another. It’s actually Ginny’s dog, Buttercup, who is adorable. He starts it, but he doesn’t realize that she’s a contestant—because she’s Charlotte when he first meets her. She doesn’t know she has to pose as Ginny, yet, then. It’s very innocent. There’s nothing nefarious about it or him. “You have the erotic romance becoming more mainstream, even more than Fifty Shades of Grey ” Charlotte spends a lot of time getting to know herself through this process. She gains a sense of self-confidence that she didn’t know she was missing. She didn’t care that she dressed down and is considered too bookish: not in a bad way, just in a different way from her glamorous sister. She also uses this time to get to know her twin. And that’s a really beautiful thing. The romance part of the story is delightful and funny and Wilson really does allow you to suspend your disbelief. While I love the Miss Congeniality and The Parent Trap combination, there are also all these little nods to Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice . The author is popular and certainly since this came out it’s been very popular. You’re rooting for the romance between Charlotte and Gray but you’re also rooting for the bond between the sisters—how Charlotte comes to her sister’s aid and all the hilarity and the problems that ensue. That is the great joy of this book, and it’s really a direction that romance seems to be going in. So with Helen Hoang, you have the erotic romance becoming more mainstream, even more than Fifty Shades of Grey . It’s a different version of erotic romance. Then you also have this other piece of romance where it’s going more in the direction of women’s fiction with these rom-com elements. So that’s why I wanted to select this book as well."