Yes, Beautiful Is Banned!

Amy Reed’s debut novel follows Cassie, who transfers to a new school determined to shed her quiet, invisible past. She befriends Alex, a charismatic and reckless girl who introduces her to a world of parties, drugs, and older boys. What starts as liberation quickly becomes something darker as Cassie loses control of the person she’s becoming. Reed writes about the seductiveness of self-destruction with uncomfortable honesty, showing how a teenager’s desire to be seen can make her vulnerable to exactly the wrong kind of attention.

Beautiful was challenged 12 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with bans in Florida school districts including Broward, Citrus, Escambia, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, and Pinellas County. The objections cite drug use, sexual content, and language. The book is the kind of cautionary story that adults claim they want teenagers to read, right up until they actually read what’s in it. Reed doesn’t sugarcoat the consequences, but she also doesn’t sugarcoat the appeal, and that honesty about why teenagers make destructive choices is apparently more threatening than a simple morality tale.