Book Review: Uglies

By Scott Westerfeld

Review by Lyndsey Pugh (the one on the left)

I give it 5 out of 5 Elephants

Uglies is the first novel in the captivating trilogy that takes place in the future where everything is high tech and simplified. It is based on the idea of human perfection that comes from just one special operation. they have the impression that anyone who hasn’t had the operation is “ugly” based supposedly on millions of years of evolution, so on everyone’s sixteenth birthday, they get the operation.

In Uglyville lives a very special girl by the name of Tally Youngblood. She is fifteen, Ugly, and desperately waiting for her sixteenth birthday to come so she can have the “pretty” operation and join her friend Peris in New Pretty Town. After an Ugly trick she plays, she meets a girl by the name of Shay. Shay is fifteen and also Ugly. When their sixteenth birthday approaches, Shay tells Tally that she doesn’t want to have the operation. She informs Tally of a place where ugly runaways go to called “The Smoke” to escape the operation. When Tally tells Shay she doesn’t want to go, Shay runs away on her own.

On the day that Tally is supposed to have the operation, she is taken from the hospital and carried to a place called “Special Circumstances”. She is informed that she has to travel to “The Smoke” alone and convince everyone that she changed her mind about the operation. When she gets there, she has to set off a finder that sends a signal to Special Circumstances and will allow them to find the location of the Smoke and all the other runaways. If she doesn’t do as they say, Tally can never become Pretty.

So she sets of for a week long journey filled with tons of obstacles in order to find The Smoke.

The book shows you how to open your eyes to the world and really see what’s going on. It also allows you to see just how selfish and ignorant people can be. I love it and highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they can stand their eyes to be opened.