North of Beautiful, Justina Chen Headley

Headley, Justina Chen (2009)
North of Beautiful
New York : Little, Brown.
9780316025058
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Terra, a sensitive, artistic senior born with a facial port-wine stain, struggles with issues of inner and outer beauty with the help of her Goth classmate, Jacob.
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Terra Cooper is a sixteen-years-old and in her final semester of high school. She is a tall and slender platinum blonde with an almost perfect body. Only two things ruin Terra’s happiness: a facial birthmark on her cheek and a verbally abusive father who is a failed cartographer. Terra has undergone several unsuccessful surgeries to remove the birthmark and continues to live in the shadow of her father’s control and contempt. Her life changes when she and her mother are involved in a minor traffic accident; Terra meets Jacob, a self-assured Asian Goth adoptee with a cleft lip. Terra and Jacob’s mothers become friends as do Terra and Jacob. When Jacob and his mother decide to travel to China to locate his birth mother, Terra and her mom decide to go, too. The journey becomes an opportunity for Terra (and her mom) to define herself outside of Terra’s father’s domineering perspective. The trip also gives them the confidence; they rethink their past and establish goals for the future. I definitely recommend this book for its poignant rich symbolism; the book confidently challenges assumptions about beauty and love. Sarah Dessen readers looking for a new author will not be disappointed.