The Uglies – Book Review

THE UGLIES is an amazing book filled with adventure, rebellion, and HOVERBOARDS! More than your typical heroine vs. government book like Divergent, Hunger Games etc. THE UGLIES makes you take a deep look at how we as a society think – our culture’s continued obsession with physical perfection. Westerfeld creates a world where government ordered surgeries to remove your ‘ugly’ born features are the norm – where your whole childhood is focused around waiting to become ‘Pretty’. Receiving pure beauty in trade for a dumbed down populace, really makes you think about priorities and freedoms of today. The stress we put ourselves through to look how everyone else wants us to look and the consequences it can have.

OVERVIEW

Tally and Peris. Friends Forever.

Everything will be back to perfect. Just 3 short months until Tally turns pretty herself and will be back together with her BFF Peris.

Until she meets Shay.

Shay shows Tally a whole new world and way of thinking about Uglies vs. Pretties. From learning to hoverboard, visiting the Ruins, and even playing into Shay’s jokes about not wanting to turn pretty, Tally enters Shay’s world. Soon realizing the severity to Shay’s ‘joking’, Tally shocking watches Shay leave for Smoke, just a few days before their turning pretty day.

Shay leaves for Smoke. Leaving only a cryptic note behind. The secret to Smoke.

On the day Tally is to turn pretty, she finds herself face-to-face with Special Circumstances. Tally learns her friend’s disappearance was larger than Shay. With Shay’s cryptic message, Tally is the only one who is capable of finding the mysterious Smoke, and is forced to help Special Circumstances track it down with the worst ultimatum: Find Shay or Never Turn Pretty. Tally must now choose between turning pretty by betraying her new friend or staying ugly forever and never being back with Peris.

“She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn’t even a pretty one.”