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marvelouspyt's review against another edition
5.0
Title: Beauty Mark: A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe
Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Format : eBook
Thanks to Edelweiss for the eARC of Beauty Mark for my honest review!
Quick Take : From the day she was born into a troubled home to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe (nee Norma Jeane Mortenson) lived a life that was often defined by others. Here, in a luminous poetic narrative, acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford tells Marilyn's story in a way that restores her voice to its rightful place: center stage.
Thoughts : I have been fascinated by Marilyn Monroe since I was a kid, so I jumped at the chance to read an advance readers' copy of Beauty Mark . This book is written in verse, or in poems, starting from childhood to a few weeks before her tragic passing. Weatherford did a wonderful job in giving Monroe her voice, even after all of years. Looking back at her life, it is really sad to see all that Marilyn went though: the numerous orphanages and foster homes, the sexual abuse she suffered, the emotional turmoil of not just her childhood but her throughout her career. But through all of that, she still tried to push through until the end. Beauty Mark is a wonderfully moving book.
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Format : eBook
Thanks to Edelweiss for the eARC of Beauty Mark for my honest review!
Quick Take : From the day she was born into a troubled home to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe (nee Norma Jeane Mortenson) lived a life that was often defined by others. Here, in a luminous poetic narrative, acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford tells Marilyn's story in a way that restores her voice to its rightful place: center stage.
Thoughts : I have been fascinated by Marilyn Monroe since I was a kid, so I jumped at the chance to read an advance readers' copy of Beauty Mark . This book is written in verse, or in poems, starting from childhood to a few weeks before her tragic passing. Weatherford did a wonderful job in giving Monroe her voice, even after all of years. Looking back at her life, it is really sad to see all that Marilyn went though: the numerous orphanages and foster homes, the sexual abuse she suffered, the emotional turmoil of not just her childhood but her throughout her career. But through all of that, she still tried to push through until the end. Beauty Mark is a wonderfully moving book.
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
samama's review against another edition
5.0
“No one knows how it feels inside my troubled mind. No one wants to.”
I only ever knew who Marilyn Monroe was and how she had died. I had never watched any of her movies before, nor did I know anything about her beyond her name and profession. However, I did always wish to know more. I wanted to know why so many people loved her so much despite her controversial past, and why they chose to count her as an inspiration. Beauty Mark by Carole Boston Weatherford helped me know so much about her. My heart is filled with so much love and respect for this woman I never met.
Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jeane, struggled so much throughout her whole life, then she struggled some more before she died. This book was a girl’s true tale of suffering, sadness and depression.
All she wanted was to be respected and praised for her hard work and talent and not only for her body. She wanted to work on serious roles - roles that would’ve made her acting talents shine. But in a world full of men who considered women as objects, she had tried, and she had failed.
Marilyn Monroe was a reader, and she lived among books. She loved animals, she loved music, and she was a kind, kind woman. No one cared for that, though, she was unloved in this pitiless world, and that’s all she really needed – enough love to make her want to live another day. But sadly, that didn’t happen.
I knew how this book was going to end, and yet I was hoping against all hopes that maybe things will go differently, I kept wishing if only she could’ve spent the remaining days of her life in peace, if only she could’ve gotten the help she really needed.
This heartbreaking verse novel got a full 5/5 stars from me.
I only ever knew who Marilyn Monroe was and how she had died. I had never watched any of her movies before, nor did I know anything about her beyond her name and profession. However, I did always wish to know more. I wanted to know why so many people loved her so much despite her controversial past, and why they chose to count her as an inspiration. Beauty Mark by Carole Boston Weatherford helped me know so much about her. My heart is filled with so much love and respect for this woman I never met.
Marilyn Monroe, aka Norma Jeane, struggled so much throughout her whole life, then she struggled some more before she died. This book was a girl’s true tale of suffering, sadness and depression.
All she wanted was to be respected and praised for her hard work and talent and not only for her body. She wanted to work on serious roles - roles that would’ve made her acting talents shine. But in a world full of men who considered women as objects, she had tried, and she had failed.
Marilyn Monroe was a reader, and she lived among books. She loved animals, she loved music, and she was a kind, kind woman. No one cared for that, though, she was unloved in this pitiless world, and that’s all she really needed – enough love to make her want to live another day. But sadly, that didn’t happen.
I knew how this book was going to end, and yet I was hoping against all hopes that maybe things will go differently, I kept wishing if only she could’ve spent the remaining days of her life in peace, if only she could’ve gotten the help she really needed.
This heartbreaking verse novel got a full 5/5 stars from me.
katscribefever's review against another edition
4.0
This turned out to be of far more substance than one may expect from a verse novel about the world's most legendary sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe--but that is in exact keeping with the truth of who she really was. Carole Boston Weatherford manages to include the entire span of Marilyn's life, from her childhood as an orphan with living parents to an ambitious young woman striving to make her own way in the world to the icon the world so idolized. And all the while, Marilyn felt no one truly knew who she was, deep down. Weatherford's poems bring Marilyn's inner turmoil to life in a beautiful and respectful way, one which diehard Marilyn fans and newbies alike can learn from and enjoy.
mezzosherri's review against another edition
4.0
Full review here: https://anotherchange.net/2020/11/28/beauty-mark-by-carole-boston-weatherford/
A YA verse novel about Marilyn Monroe, told in first person voice by Norma Jean/Marilyn herself, with poems arranged in a simple flashback narrative sequence. The opening poem takes place as she is being sewn into the couture gown in which she performed her famous singing of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." Weatherford has shared in interviews that her imaginative springboard was that during the hours it took for this sewing and styling to happen, Monroe would look back over her life and reflect on how she got to where she is now.
Most of the poems that make up this narrative are in free verse, with a few interspersed poems that are rhymed or otherwise more tightly structured. Perhaps most effective of these structured selections is a six-line sock-to-the-gut, “Miscarriage Blues: Ectopic Pregnancy, 1957.” Weatherford also makes frequent use of list poems, my favorite of which, "Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover," actively works to blow up Monroe's "dumb blonde" reputation by revealing the voracity of her reading---even with a diagnosis of dyslexia.
All together, the poems paint a complicated picture of a complicated woman---someone who was both victim of circumstance and also a savvy self-creator of her public persona and myth. Some poems express Monroe's frustration with being typecast as a blonde bombshell, while others show her conscious creation of that persona, from teen years ("Junior High: Better in a Sweater") to the height of her career ("The Physics of Ferragamos"), as well as her growing business savvy and artistic consciousness.
I enjoyed it and whole-heartedly recommend. It made me enough interested about the woman behind the myth that I might add some legit biographies of Monroe to my reading wish list.
A YA verse novel about Marilyn Monroe, told in first person voice by Norma Jean/Marilyn herself, with poems arranged in a simple flashback narrative sequence. The opening poem takes place as she is being sewn into the couture gown in which she performed her famous singing of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." Weatherford has shared in interviews that her imaginative springboard was that during the hours it took for this sewing and styling to happen, Monroe would look back over her life and reflect on how she got to where she is now.
Most of the poems that make up this narrative are in free verse, with a few interspersed poems that are rhymed or otherwise more tightly structured. Perhaps most effective of these structured selections is a six-line sock-to-the-gut, “Miscarriage Blues: Ectopic Pregnancy, 1957.” Weatherford also makes frequent use of list poems, my favorite of which, "Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover," actively works to blow up Monroe's "dumb blonde" reputation by revealing the voracity of her reading---even with a diagnosis of dyslexia.
All together, the poems paint a complicated picture of a complicated woman---someone who was both victim of circumstance and also a savvy self-creator of her public persona and myth. Some poems express Monroe's frustration with being typecast as a blonde bombshell, while others show her conscious creation of that persona, from teen years ("Junior High: Better in a Sweater") to the height of her career ("The Physics of Ferragamos"), as well as her growing business savvy and artistic consciousness.
I enjoyed it and whole-heartedly recommend. It made me enough interested about the woman behind the myth that I might add some legit biographies of Monroe to my reading wish list.
thenextgenlibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
“Surprise with wit. Seduce with smiles. My beauty mark is real.”
rdyourbookcase's review against another edition
5.0
I'm more of an Audrey Hepburn person than Marilyn Monroe, but this book definitely made me want to learn more about Monroe's work. She had an unstable childhood, which set her up for pain later in life. Men underestimated and used her, but she desperately needed their attention. I empathized with her and wondered what she would have been like if she had lived now, when women are more free to make their own choices. Not only was the writing fantastic, but the book itself was also beautiful. I loved it.
thenextgenlib's review against another edition
5.0
“Surprise with wit. Seduce with smiles. My beauty mark is real.”
brooke_review's review against another edition
3.0
Carole Boston Weatherford has made a career of telling the stories of prominent historical figures in a way that is both accessible and enjoyable for children and young adults. Weatherford's latest subject is the infamous Marilyn Monroe, née Norma Jeane Baker, who after a tumultuous and abusive upbringing, rose as a star in Hollywood, before her untimely death by overdose at the age of 36. Marilyn Monroe is known to this day as being a beautiful, voluptuous sex symbol, but Weatherford works to show a different side of Marilyn in her new novel, Beauty Mark: A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe.
Beauty Mark opens on young Norma Jeane's life with her mentally ill mother, being bounced around from home to home before becoming a teenage bride at the age of 16. After catching the eye of execs as a pin-up model, Marilyn earned bit part roles in films before her big break in Hollywood. Typically typecast in "blonde bombshell" roles, Marilyn cemented her place in history as a sex symbol of the Golden Age of Hollywood. But there was much more to Marilyn than what was shown on the big screen, and that's where Weatherford comes in.
Told in a series of verses, Beauty Mark gives a voice to Marilyn Monroe, allowing readers into her private thoughts and moments, and demonstrating that there was more substance to this woman than what has been portrayed in the media. This short little book is a testament to Marilyn and the work she put into her career, raising herself from her hardscrabble upbringing to becoming an unforgettable woman who is etched in hearts and history forever.
Beauty Mark is a unique and serious book, picking and choosing parts of Marilyn's personal life and covering much of her work in Hollywood. While I enjoyed this book, I also felt that Marilyn's voice and presence were distant throughout the novel, as if I were holding her at arm's length. I also found myself bored at times with the many film plot summaries sprinkled throughout the book. These sections of the novel provided little insight into Marilyn's life and could easily be researched on the Internet if one was interested. As a reader of a fictionalized account of someone's life, I would much prefer to hear the behind the scenes stories that are not common knowledge. The little tidbits of life and nuances of personality that help you get to know a famous figure on a more intimate level. This is what I feel Beauty Mark lacks.
Beauty Mark is recommended to lovers of biographical fiction, anyone who is interested in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and of course, those who are intrigued by the mysterious Marilyn Monroe.
Thank you to NetGalley & Candlewick Press for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Beauty Mark opens on young Norma Jeane's life with her mentally ill mother, being bounced around from home to home before becoming a teenage bride at the age of 16. After catching the eye of execs as a pin-up model, Marilyn earned bit part roles in films before her big break in Hollywood. Typically typecast in "blonde bombshell" roles, Marilyn cemented her place in history as a sex symbol of the Golden Age of Hollywood. But there was much more to Marilyn than what was shown on the big screen, and that's where Weatherford comes in.
Told in a series of verses, Beauty Mark gives a voice to Marilyn Monroe, allowing readers into her private thoughts and moments, and demonstrating that there was more substance to this woman than what has been portrayed in the media. This short little book is a testament to Marilyn and the work she put into her career, raising herself from her hardscrabble upbringing to becoming an unforgettable woman who is etched in hearts and history forever.
Beauty Mark is a unique and serious book, picking and choosing parts of Marilyn's personal life and covering much of her work in Hollywood. While I enjoyed this book, I also felt that Marilyn's voice and presence were distant throughout the novel, as if I were holding her at arm's length. I also found myself bored at times with the many film plot summaries sprinkled throughout the book. These sections of the novel provided little insight into Marilyn's life and could easily be researched on the Internet if one was interested. As a reader of a fictionalized account of someone's life, I would much prefer to hear the behind the scenes stories that are not common knowledge. The little tidbits of life and nuances of personality that help you get to know a famous figure on a more intimate level. This is what I feel Beauty Mark lacks.
Beauty Mark is recommended to lovers of biographical fiction, anyone who is interested in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and of course, those who are intrigued by the mysterious Marilyn Monroe.
Thank you to NetGalley & Candlewick Press for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
dispositionpictures's review against another edition
4.0
“With my eyes shut, I could see a new life”. I have always been fascinated with Marilyn Monroe and her glamourous life. However, this novel brought so much more information on the timeless starlette. Reading this Verse Novel made me feel as if I was reading an intimate diary from Marilyn herself. Who knew a novel about lifetime struggles could be so heartwrenching and beautiful. There is more than meets the eye when it comes to Monroe, and this book delivers all you need to know.
ericadeb's review against another edition
2.0
This book is like a timeline in verse. It’s interesting, but fiction passing as nonfiction and eventually just feels like it’s droning on and one. It’s a pass.