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OLDER FICTION
Mejia, Tehlor Kay , McLemore, Anna-Marie

Miss Meteor

400 pp. | HarperTeen | September, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-0-06-286991-3 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-06-286993-7 $8.99
(2) YA In the small town of Meteor, New Mexico, a social highlight of the year is the Miss Meteor pageant. Latinx sophomore Lita, who's being raised by a healer known as Bruja Lupe, feels out of place and believes she fell to Earth over fifty years ago with the meteor for which the town is named ("I don't remember the moment I turned from star-stuff thrown off a meteor into a girl...No one really remembers being born"). When Lita decides to enter the pageant to break the streak of tall, blonde, white winners, she knows she is a long shot to win the title, and she knows she will need her more practical former friend Chicky's help to get ready for the elaborate talent, swimsuit, and evening gown contests. Chicky hopes to help her family's diner by bringing home a cut of the prize money, so she agrees to participate, despite her estrangement from Lita. An underdog crew is born--Chicky and her sisters, Chicky's best friend Junior, and Cole, the trans brother of the odds-on favorite to win the pageant--and all grow to be themselves more comfortably as Lita learns pageant skills. The novel's chapters alternate between Chicky's realistic tale of struggling with openness about her sexuality and Lita's magical realism–tinged story about feeling as though she is made of stardust and will soon disappear. Occasionally, the chapters feel disjointed, as the two narrators' voices are so different. But readers will be drawn into this story of an unlikely beauty queen and an unusual town.
Reviewer: Christina L. Dobbs | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2020

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