I couldn’t for the life of me remember why I checked this book out of the library; I hate books about girly stuff. Beauty pageants….. But this book is amazing. It’s a near-future sci-fi dystopia with echoes of contemporary suburbia. Swarms of mutant grasshoppers the size of cats lurk innocuously in every corner. Gangs of blowtorch wielding teenage boys roam the streets. Teenage girls are taught to be the perfect epitome of beauty, synthetic sex with synthetic rubber men, and perfectly trained in clubbing and skinning their ninja-dancer rabbits to compete in beauty pageants. And Edie can’t keep her mind and hands off of the girl next door long enough to concentrate on the pageant.

The writing is a little rough in places; it’s Lerner’s first novel. The title of the books is echoed in every product mentioned in the book (Just Like Cotton Sheets. Just Like Aspirin.), which is funny at first but gets old fast. I was disappointed with the ending; it didn’t fit in with the rest of the book. But the meat (Sorry. The “Just Like Meat”) of the novel was amazing. ( )