Student Review: Beautiful (Martinusen-Coloma)

Title: Beautiful: Truth is Found When Beauty is Lost

Author: Cindy Martinusen-Coloma
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 272
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars


This book is about an amazing girl named Ellie Summerfield. She has everything a teenager could want in her life: she’s pretty, popular, gets straight A’s, and has a schedule filled with parties or volunteer commitments. One day though changed everything! She went to a party and was coming home late at night with her friend and got into a huge car crash. Her friend died, and she survived but had 3rd degree burns all over the left side of her! So this book is mostly how her personality takes a huge turn after the accident, and her dealing with these burns.


The theme of this book is really the underdog and the decision because Ellie does of course have a disadvantage because of the burns on her face but she has to make a decision if she wants to complain about these burns all her life, or live her life in a better way. I thought an interesting character was Megan Summerfield, Ellie’s sister. Megan was the opposite of Ellie at the beginning of the book. She smoked, drank, hated life, barely had friends and hated her sister. After Ellie’s accident though you can see a nicer side of Megan and both sisters' relationship changes for the better!


I liked how the author describes everything with great detail, and this book makes you very emotional at times. I disliked however how the story dragged on at times. All in all, I would recommend this book to any teen girl because it makes you realize what true beauty is. This book shows how one thing can impact someone forever and I truly learned many lessons about what beautiful really is in this book.


This book really makes you think deeply….what if you had something horrible happen to yourself, how would you deal with it?
--Pooja, 8th grade

I have not read this book, but the cover is very intriguing.  I am wondering if it would work for our 8th Grade Survival unit?  Hmmm...this might be another one to add to my "to read" pile.