You Could Be So Pretty By Holly Bourne

A dystopian YA novel with a shocking twist, You Could Be So Pretty is The Beauty Myth for teenagers.

“The Doctrine exists to make us believe we are less than, so we don’t have the strength to overthrow everything. Masking, and Ceremonies, and Chosen Ones – how we’re all groomed to worry constantly about what we look like – it’s a deliberate pressure. It’s designed to keep us down. To limit us. Divide us. Masks…Beauty…it’s all about weakening and dividing us.”

Belle Gentle follows the rules of The Doctrine to the letter and is so close to Having It All. She’s the highest Pretty in school, A Chosen One in her spare time, and she’s about to win The Ceremony and fulfil her destiny. So why does she feel so suffocated by her perfect life?

Joni Miller is an Objectionable and hated by everyone for her repulsive looks. But Joni doesn’t care. She just needs to win the Scholarship to The Education, so she get the power to overthrow The Doctrine and wake everyone up. The only person standing in her way is the prettiest girl in school.

Set in a dystopian world, of normalised sexual violence, and where girls are expected to maintain impossible beauty standards of beauty, You Could Be So Pretty explores what happens when two enemies are thrown together. As Belle and Joni confront their prejudices, the reader is left asking themselves: Is this world really so far from our own?