Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.
But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever. A very action-paced book; and a truly great read.
Content warning spoiler
I remember the main thing I hated about this book is how long-winded and tedious the scenes where Tally goes through the wilderness by herself. The purposefully exotic futuristic slang can be grating at times as well. Decent concept, entertaining, not much more than that.
Uglies is about self-esteem, self-hatred, and the pursuit of beauty through a dystopian lense, balancing showing & telling to keep from infodumping. This was my first dystopia as a kid, & I’m pleased that it holds up as well as I remember.‬
Tally is an unreliable narrator in a really good way. She doesn’t really lie to the reader, but her narration is so wholly shaped by her worldview that her thought process informs the reader about the world in a really neat way. She’s not infallible, so when her assumptions about her world are wrong it affects what she lets the reader know.
Most of what I love in this series is set up here but pays off later, so to keep it spoiler free: read this series, read this book. I do need to give the cw that there are serious discussions of body image and negative ideation …
Too generic and banal.
Solid young adult fiction.
Most reviewers refer to the Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder," but it's really far more similar to "Number 12 Looks Just Like You." That's a plus rather than a minus; it's thematically similar but updated and expanded.
The end made me curious... how will it go on?
Nevertheless I didn't like the book. It would make a good movie or TV series but it's just too boring for a book.
Full review to come.
