You Should See Me in a Crown

You Should See Me in a Crown is a young adult novel by Leah Johnson, published in 2020, and it follows a girl who enters a competition she has no interest in winning.

Liz Lighty is used to being out of place in Campbell, Indiana, a town that measures its teenagers by what they wear to the prom, and she has a plan that will remove her from it permanently: Pennington College, its orchestra, and a career in medicine. The plan breaks when the financial aid she was relying on is withdrawn. The one remaining route is the school's scholarship for prom king and queen, which means enduring a season of social media attention, competitive classmates and public events designed to humiliate everybody involved. What makes it bearable is a new girl at school, and what complicates it is that Liz is running for a crown she never wanted while trying to hold on to something she does. Johnson writes the novel as a romantic comedy with an argument attached about who a school chooses to celebrate.

The book is about a young woman learning how much of her own ambition was shaped by the need to leave, and how much of the leaving she still wants.