Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
My Rating:

Amazon.com Review

Playing on every teen’s passionate desire to look as good as everybody else, Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters) projects a future world in which a compulsory operation at sixteen wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty by conforming to an ideal standard of beauty. The "New Pretties" are then free to play and party, while the younger "Uglies" look on enviously and spend the time before their own transformations in plotting mischievous tricks against their elders. Tally Youngblood is one of the most daring of the Uglies, and her imaginative tricks have gotten her in trouble with the menacing department of Special Circumstances. She has yearned to be pretty, but since her best friend Shay ran away to the rumored rebel settlement of recalcitrant Uglies called The Smoke, Tally has been troubled. The authorities give her an impossible choice: either she follows Shay’s cryptic directions to The Smoke with the purpose of betraying the rebels, or she will never be allowed to become pretty. Hoping to rescue Shay, Tally sets off on the dangerous journey as a spy. But after finally reaching The Smoke she has a change of heart when her new lover David reveals to her the sinister secret behind becoming pretty. The fast-moving story is enlivened by many action sequences in the style of videogames, using intriguing inventions like hoverboards that use the rider’s skateboard skills to skim through the air, and bungee jackets that make wild downward plunges survivable -- and fun. Behind all the commotion is the disturbing vision of our own society -- the Rusties -- visible only in rusting ruins after a virus destroyed all petroleum. Teens will be entranced, and the cliffhanger ending will leave them gasping for the sequel. (Ages 12 and up) --Patty Campbell

 

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS BELOW*

What I think:

The synopsis has already been described above so I wont go into it to much. To make it simple Tally lives in Ugly Ville which is outside of Pretty Town. According the story everyone’s considered ugly until there 16^th birthday. On there 16^th birthday everyone gets plastic surgery and there made into a pretty. Tally meets Shay her new best friend who wants to run away to a secret village called the smoke. In smoke it’s a hidden village that no one knows about and everyone stays ugly there. Shay goes with this guy from the smoke named David and Tally stays behind to become pretty. All Tally ever wanted was to become pretty as well as everyone else because that’s what she was raised to one day do.
The day of her 16^th birthday she goes to get the surgery but they wont give it to her because her friend Shays missing. They want Tally to travel to the smoke to find shay and signal them so they can locate the smoke. Tally refuses because she doesn’t want to betray her friend. She ends up going because if not they’ll never turn her pretty. She follows her best friends directions to the smoke alone. Once she gets there all she has to is open the locket they gave her and they’ll be able to track her and the smoke. Once Tally arrives in Smoke she’s welcomed and ends up liking it there. Tally has to make a huge decision to either betray her best friend or to stay at smoke and be ugly forever…
I absolutely loved this book and Tally and David and Shay! I loved the ending and I’m dieing to read the next book! : )

Love,

Brittany-Blues