North of Beautiful, Justina Chen Headley

From Goodreads: Born with a port-wine stain birthmark covering her entire right cheek, Terra Rose Cooper is ready to leave her stifling, small Washington town where everyone knows her for her face. With her critical, reproachful father and an obese mother who turns to food to deflect her father's verbal attacks, home life for Terra isn't so great either. Fueled by her artistic desires, she plans to escape to an East Coast college, thinking this is her true path. When her father intercepts her acceptance letter, Terra is pushed off-course, and she is forced to confront her deepest insecurities. After an ironically fortuitous car accident, Terra meets Jacob, a handsome but odd goth Chinese boy who was adopted from China as a toddler. Jacob immediately understands Terra's battle with feeling different. When Terra's older brother invites her and her mother to visit him in Shanghai, Jacob and his mother also join them on their journey, where they all not only confront the truth about themselves, but also realize their own true beauty. North of Beautiful is the engaging third YA novel by Justina Chen Headley. This is a gorgeously-written, compelling book featuring universal themes of defining true beauty, family bonds, personal strength, and love. This book has been sitting on my shelf for months, just sitting there waiting to be opened and absorbed. After getting a personal recommendation from Yan, I finally picked the book up. And WOW! Am I glad I did. This book is gloriously written. The characters are deeply drawn and I felt every emotion that they felt, even the lesser characters who are equally just as important in this story of acceptance. Terra Rose Cooper has always been ridiculed because of a port-wine stain birthmark that covers the side of her face, no amount of cover-up, laser surgery can lighten it enough to make Terra and her family forget about it. I cannot agree more with Goodreads review of this book, and feel as if anything I write is trite in comparison. This book just WOW'D me and I find myself still thinking of it's themes of beauty, acceptance, the bonds between family and most of all love. I loved Jacob and his right on sexy Goth boy getup. He knew when to make the most of a tiny flaw and would showcase it for everyone to see. If people only see the flaw, then just smile and move on your way, they're not worthy of you. I could learn a lot from that statement! We see so many ads nowadays with beautiful, long-legged models with perfect teeth, cheekbones, chins, foreheads, etc, but what we consider beautiful is deep within us and not everyone's idea of beauty is they same. Terra worked hard on her body to take away from her face and it worked as she snagged a boyfriend, Erik, but he doesn't get her all. Not like Chinese American goth guy, Jacob. Who sees past Terra's cover-up and sees true beauty. 5 Bookmarks