425 pages
English language
Published Jan. 5, 2005 by Simon Pulse.
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
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.
