Okay, this book kept popping up everywhere. The whole, "If you loved The Hunger Games or Divergent you'll love this book!" yada yada yada. I looked it up, but it didn't appeal to me. Not even the summary.
"In a world of extreme beauty everyone normal is ugly," is on the cover of the book, for pete's sakes. Not my kind of book.
But then, I was browsing at the library and came across it, and thought, "What the heck... if nothing else it'll be a good book review on my blog."
Let me just tell you how much I fell in love with this book. I think the best books are the ones we anticipate hating, because we don't have high expectations for them AT ALL.
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The Summary:
Uglies is the first in a trilogy (with an extra book afterward, that doesn't pertain to the main character) written by Scott Westerfield.
Tally Youngblood, our main character, lives in Uglyville at the beginning of the story. In the city, you are pronounced "ugly" until you reach the age of 16, when you undergo surgery to make you "pretty".
Tally's only friend, Peris, turns 16 before her and she is left to wait for her 16th birthday alone. Until she meets Shay, a young daredevil and rebel much like herself. Tally and Shay become friends and have a lot of fun, until Shay tells Tally about a new city where no one is pretty, and everyone is themselves. Shay also tells Tally that she is going to run away and go there. She invites Tally to come, but why would Tally want to go, when all she's ever wanted was to be pretty?
Shay leaves, and Tally prepares to become pretty. However, the law of the city (called Special Circumstances) knows Tally was friends with Shay and offers Tally a choice.
To go find Shay and turn her and the entire secret city over to Special Circumstances, or never become pretty herself.
Profanity:
None.
Violence:
A few deaths, nothing is described though. The operation to turn people "pretty" is described in detail.
Romance:
A few kisses.
Age Suggestion:
10+
My Opinion:
This book is probably going on my top twenty favorite books. And a book has to be really good to go on that list. Not only because of the spectacular plot, but because of the message it gives out. A bunch of times, the book refers to the people and the country before the whole "pretty" ordeal. It mentions that the reason everyone has to be "pretty" is because the country before had all kinds of wars and jealousy problems with appearances. People starving themselves to be skinnier, people wanting to look prettier than other people, and the controversy of skin color. Does this sound familiar to you guys? For heaven's sake, this is us...
This is our society! Look how shallow we are! I realize that being "ugly" and then "pretty" is pretty darn shallow, but look at us! This book really points out our flaws as humans and our need to be better, prettier, than anyone else.
Wake up call for me. Seriously.
Anyway, the book was great.
I did find some things I wasn't a fan of though. Such as it being told in third person. I normally read (and write) in first, so it's really, and I mean really, hard for me to adapt to third person quickly. I was still struggling with it halfway through the book, because as I saw, there was no real point to doing it in thirdt. In fact, it would have been better in first. But, I'm giving the guy props on writing this book from a girl's point of view. It's hard to write from the other gender's POV(trust me, I've tried. And failed.)
I also figured out the big huge secret/ climaxy thing way before it was unveiled. A little more discretion to the secret would have been really nice. And there were a few characters that really confused me (what's up with Shay halfway through the book? It's like someone flipped a switch and she morphed into a new person...)
But overall it was amazing, and I'm already halfway through the next book in the trilogy, "Pretties".
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