Reading The Night She Won Miss America by Michael Callahan was very much like reading two books. The first half of the story was about the actual Miss America contest in the 1950s and it was highly entertaining and interesting. Unfortunately the second half of the book was far-fetched, silly and had the main character dissolve from a sensible and smart young lady into a ridiculous mess of girly indecisiveness. And, even worse to my way of thinking, expected the readers to accept this badly plotted story-line.

I found out at the back of the book that part of the story was based on an actual occurrence in a past Miss America event. A contestant did indeed fall hard for her assigned escort, he in turn did state that he would not be the boyfriend of a Miss America, and she did win. When he broke off with her immediately, she was heartbroken enough to try to renounce her title. This and the actual contest itself, was the basis for the interesting first half of the story. The author then stretched the story out and tried to amp up the suspense which ended in the second half of the book becoming an over-done “on-the-run” story that was just foolish.

This is my first book by this author and I have at least one more on my shelves so I will be giving him another try at some point. For this book, I would have given the first half of the story 4 stars and the second half 2, so will settle on 3 stars for the combined total. ( )

An interesting novel about a romance that blooms around the Miss America pageant in the 1950s and results in the winning lady disappearing on the night of her victory. Overall, this was a good book, but I did struggle to get into the story for a bit (perhaps because beauty pageants really aren't my thing?), and I felt Griff's mental illness deserved more development and explanation. ( )