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Uglies: Uglies, Book 1
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 6,649 ratings
Price: 17.05
Last update: 12-25-2024
About this item
Tally lives in a world where your 16th birthday brings aesthetic perfection: an operation that erases all your flaws, transforming you from an "Ugly" into a "Pretty". She is on the eve of this important event and cannot wait for her life to change. As well as guaranteeing supermodel looks, life as a Pretty seems to revolve around having a good time. But then she meets Shay, who is also 15 - but with a very different outlook on life. Shay isn't sure she wants to be Pretty and plans to escape to a community in the forest - the Rusty Ruins - where Uglies go to escape "turning". Tally won't be persuaded to join her, as this would involve sacrificing everything she's ever wanted for a lot of uncertainty. When she is taken in for questioning on her birthday, however, Tally gets sent to the Ruins anyway - against her will. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she could ever imagine: Find her friend, Shay, and turn her in or never turn Pretty at all. What she discovers in the Ruins reveals that there is nothing "pretty" about the transformations...and the choice Tally makes will change her world forever.
Top reviews from the United States
Amy5.0 out of 5 stars Loved the entire series
TacoReader4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, entertaining read
Uglies is yet another one of those series I started without any idea of the plot (I have got to stop doing that. It's really going to backfire on me someday). All I knew was that it's yet another YA dystopian. I know, I know, the genre is flooded with mediocrity right now, but before you immediately tune out, let me just throw this out there: this one is actually good.
PLOT:
Uglies follows Tally Youngblood, a 15-year-old girl living in a futuristic society that has decided that the main thing wrong with the world is that attractive people have unfair advantages over the unattractive. The solution? Everyone undergoes cosmetic surgery on their 16th birthday, modifying all their facial and physical features to fit a common standard of perfect beauty.
Once the procedure is complete, these former "Uglies" are now allowed to live in beautiful cities with the "Pretties," where their every need is catered to via a hole in the wall (think replicators on Star Trek: TNG), and their only concern is what to wear to the next fabulous party.
Tally is eagerly awaiting her operation, passing her time with harmless pranks on the Pretties, until she meets Shay. Shay is also 15, and therefore also an Ugly. As a matter of fact, she and Tally share the same birthday, which means they will have their procedures at the same time.
The difference is that Shay doesn't want the procedure. And after unsuccessfully trying to convince Tally to run away with her, Shay disappears. All she leaves behind is a set of cryptic instructions, in case Tally wants to join her.
While Tally is concerned for Shay, she doesn't fluctuate in her desire to become a Pretty. She hopes Shay got what she wanted. But soon, Tally will get what she wants too.
However, on the day of Tally's procedure, she is presented with an awful choice: go find Shay, and the rebels she has run away with, or stay Ugly forever.
Thus begins Tally's journey to the Smoke, the secret rebel hideout that Shay has fled to. All Tally wants is to put this all behind her and become Pretty. Until she finds the Smoke, and starts to question everything she ever believed.
MY THOUGHTS:
I'll admit, I was a little wary about starting a series that revolves around being pretty. I mean seriously, how much more superficial can you get? I was prepared to be super-annoyed with the shallowness of it all.
But once I started reading, I found myself completely absorbed in Tally's world. Mr. Westerfeld actually made me understand how Tally would want nothing more in life than to become Pretty, and managed to do it without making me hate her. No small task.
There were a few things I could nitpick about the plot. The endless hoverboarding, for example, made me think someone bet Mr. Westerfeld that he couldn't write an entire book based off of the chase scene in Back to the Future II.
Also, I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out how anything actually got accomplished in this world. What I surmised was that the inhabitants of Uglyville go to school, then turn 16 and party hearty for a few years until they hit "Middle Pretty" age and actually start contributing something to society. Not that I could imagine any of them actually wanting to contribute, since it sounds like the Pretty lifestyle was the epitome of luxury and indulgence. Maybe you or I would get tired of living like that, but the Pretties don't seem to mind in the least.
Is a workforce consisting entirely of middle-aged ex-partiers (as it's implied that the elderly, or "Crumblies" -- ouch -- also do not work) enough to keep this advanced society running smoothly? Maybe not in the world you and I live in. In the world of Uglies, though, it works.
When it comes to YA fiction -- or any fiction, for that matter -- I can almost always poke holes in the logic of the world as it's written. The question I have to ask myself is, "Did I care?" If the answer is yes, it pulls me out of the story and diminishes my enjoyment of the book.
With Uglies, the answer was no. I didn't care that not everything made sense. What I cared about was Tally. Was she a perfect character? Heck no. She drove me nuts at times (this is also one of the main downfalls of reading YA lit, period. The protagonists are always teenagers. I am not). But she was fun to read about, her journey was exciting, and I couldn't put the book down until I knew what happened to her.
PLOT:
Uglies follows Tally Youngblood, a 15-year-old girl living in a futuristic society that has decided that the main thing wrong with the world is that attractive people have unfair advantages over the unattractive. The solution? Everyone undergoes cosmetic surgery on their 16th birthday, modifying all their facial and physical features to fit a common standard of perfect beauty.
Once the procedure is complete, these former "Uglies" are now allowed to live in beautiful cities with the "Pretties," where their every need is catered to via a hole in the wall (think replicators on Star Trek: TNG), and their only concern is what to wear to the next fabulous party.
Tally is eagerly awaiting her operation, passing her time with harmless pranks on the Pretties, until she meets Shay. Shay is also 15, and therefore also an Ugly. As a matter of fact, she and Tally share the same birthday, which means they will have their procedures at the same time.
The difference is that Shay doesn't want the procedure. And after unsuccessfully trying to convince Tally to run away with her, Shay disappears. All she leaves behind is a set of cryptic instructions, in case Tally wants to join her.
While Tally is concerned for Shay, she doesn't fluctuate in her desire to become a Pretty. She hopes Shay got what she wanted. But soon, Tally will get what she wants too.
However, on the day of Tally's procedure, she is presented with an awful choice: go find Shay, and the rebels she has run away with, or stay Ugly forever.
Thus begins Tally's journey to the Smoke, the secret rebel hideout that Shay has fled to. All Tally wants is to put this all behind her and become Pretty. Until she finds the Smoke, and starts to question everything she ever believed.
MY THOUGHTS:
I'll admit, I was a little wary about starting a series that revolves around being pretty. I mean seriously, how much more superficial can you get? I was prepared to be super-annoyed with the shallowness of it all.
But once I started reading, I found myself completely absorbed in Tally's world. Mr. Westerfeld actually made me understand how Tally would want nothing more in life than to become Pretty, and managed to do it without making me hate her. No small task.
There were a few things I could nitpick about the plot. The endless hoverboarding, for example, made me think someone bet Mr. Westerfeld that he couldn't write an entire book based off of the chase scene in Back to the Future II.
Also, I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out how anything actually got accomplished in this world. What I surmised was that the inhabitants of Uglyville go to school, then turn 16 and party hearty for a few years until they hit "Middle Pretty" age and actually start contributing something to society. Not that I could imagine any of them actually wanting to contribute, since it sounds like the Pretty lifestyle was the epitome of luxury and indulgence. Maybe you or I would get tired of living like that, but the Pretties don't seem to mind in the least.
Is a workforce consisting entirely of middle-aged ex-partiers (as it's implied that the elderly, or "Crumblies" -- ouch -- also do not work) enough to keep this advanced society running smoothly? Maybe not in the world you and I live in. In the world of Uglies, though, it works.
When it comes to YA fiction -- or any fiction, for that matter -- I can almost always poke holes in the logic of the world as it's written. The question I have to ask myself is, "Did I care?" If the answer is yes, it pulls me out of the story and diminishes my enjoyment of the book.
With Uglies, the answer was no. I didn't care that not everything made sense. What I cared about was Tally. Was she a perfect character? Heck no. She drove me nuts at times (this is also one of the main downfalls of reading YA lit, period. The protagonists are always teenagers. I am not). But she was fun to read about, her journey was exciting, and I couldn't put the book down until I knew what happened to her.
Blue Eyes5.0 out of 5 stars Tally is an Ugly - a person who has no reached 16 yet
At 16 you get the operation to make you Pretty and you move across the river and live a beautiful life. At least that is what it looks like. Her best friend Peris is already a Pretty. He promised he would not forget her and keep in touch, but he seems to have forgotten about her.
She finds another girl, Shay, whose friends are all gone. Some are Pretties and some have left for The Smoke and David. A mysterious and maybe made up city where no one is Pretty. Where Uglies go and stay Ugly. The night before they are to become Pretty (they share a birthday) Shay leaves to go to The Smoke, and all she leaves Tally are cryptic directions to The Smoke in case Tally wants to follow.
On the day Tally is to turn Pretty, Dr. Cable takes her to a different location called Special Circumstances and informs her that until she brings Shay back and helps find The Smoke she will not be Pretty.
Tally has to decide if she is going to betray her friends or be what she has been waiting for her whole life, even if it is not as great as she believed.
She finds another girl, Shay, whose friends are all gone. Some are Pretties and some have left for The Smoke and David. A mysterious and maybe made up city where no one is Pretty. Where Uglies go and stay Ugly. The night before they are to become Pretty (they share a birthday) Shay leaves to go to The Smoke, and all she leaves Tally are cryptic directions to The Smoke in case Tally wants to follow.
On the day Tally is to turn Pretty, Dr. Cable takes her to a different location called Special Circumstances and informs her that until she brings Shay back and helps find The Smoke she will not be Pretty.
Tally has to decide if she is going to betray her friends or be what she has been waiting for her whole life, even if it is not as great as she believed.
Crystal5.0 out of 5 stars Good
How I never read this before now is a mystery to me. This is a fascinating future dystopian read. Tally is interesting and knows what she wants even though all of that changes eventually. I look forward to reading the next book.
FoxysMom3.0 out of 5 stars Strong concept, weak story.
In this futuristic world, there are Uglies and there are Pretties. Main character, Tally is an Ugly, who can't wait for her sixteenth birthday, that magical birthday when all newly 16-year-olds get to undergo plastic surgery to become a Pretty. Once Pretty, she gets to go to the New Prettytown, where a Pretty's only job is to have fun. Everything looks like its going to go according to Tally's plan, until her friend Shay, decides to run away rather than become pretty...And Tally is given the task of tracking her down and bring her back into civilization.
I didn't love this book from start to finish, but some parts were definitely more lovable than others. At first the story was hard to get into: Even though the story is told by Tally, who is almost sixteen, her voice seemed to belong to someone much younger than a teenager approaching adulthood. In the beginning it was hard to relate to someone so childlike, but when Tally started meeting with the Agents of Special Circumstance, her innocence worked in the book's favor taking a bad situation and making it so much more disturbing.
As Tally goes off on her quest to find Shay, it eventually gets easy to get lost in the adventure of traveling to a secret society by hoverboard. Once she finds the group, you can't help but feel a little bad for her: Society had groomed her to desire artificial beauty and now all she wants it to be pretty; now she's left facing a moral dilemma about how far she's willing to go to get what she wants and who is she willing to hurt...And just as you're beginning to find substance in the story, Scott Westerfeld had to go and cheapen it with a teenage-love triangle. I don't know why so many YA authors want rely on romance to make their stories stick, and I can understand how Tally and David would work as a plot device... Someone needed to make Tally see herself beyond how the government wants her to perceive herself. But why the third person heartbreak? It didn't advance the story and as a subplot, it went no where.
I think the morals Scott Westerfeld was trying to express got across clearly, but I think it could have been done better. I understood why he chose simple names for the two classes. Everyone wants to be Pretty, no one wants to be Ugly. But then I read the names of cities: New Prettytown, Uglyville, Crumblytown, Rusty Ruin, and thought, "It's like you're not even trying." Then there were things that weren't ever addressed, things that you'd expect to be addressed in a science fiction novel taking place in a futuristic society: Like why parents aren't involved in their children's lives, what kind of government is in place-->If Special Circumstances are in charge of keeping the peace, who gave them that job? And I was able to guess almost immediately from Shay and Tally's conversations about New Pretty behavior, that more than plastic surgery was going on on the operating table, although, that might be because I'm older than the target audience...(Who else noticed the shameless Smash Mouth shout-out?)
In some ways, Tally seemed to mature with the story, in others she regressed. The more pressures she had to deal with, the smarter she became, making decisions cautiously, instead of impulsively. On the other hand, there were numerous time where she could have and should have told the truth, and each time choosing to invent foolish, elaborate lies, rather than asking for help. Which make her a bit of an oxymoron in the end; she wants to do the right thing by her friends, but doesn't care how many people get hurt by her lies.
This book was certainly based on a thought provoking premise, but the story fell short of the concept.
I didn't love this book from start to finish, but some parts were definitely more lovable than others. At first the story was hard to get into: Even though the story is told by Tally, who is almost sixteen, her voice seemed to belong to someone much younger than a teenager approaching adulthood. In the beginning it was hard to relate to someone so childlike, but when Tally started meeting with the Agents of Special Circumstance, her innocence worked in the book's favor taking a bad situation and making it so much more disturbing.
As Tally goes off on her quest to find Shay, it eventually gets easy to get lost in the adventure of traveling to a secret society by hoverboard. Once she finds the group, you can't help but feel a little bad for her: Society had groomed her to desire artificial beauty and now all she wants it to be pretty; now she's left facing a moral dilemma about how far she's willing to go to get what she wants and who is she willing to hurt...And just as you're beginning to find substance in the story, Scott Westerfeld had to go and cheapen it with a teenage-love triangle. I don't know why so many YA authors want rely on romance to make their stories stick, and I can understand how Tally and David would work as a plot device... Someone needed to make Tally see herself beyond how the government wants her to perceive herself. But why the third person heartbreak? It didn't advance the story and as a subplot, it went no where.
I think the morals Scott Westerfeld was trying to express got across clearly, but I think it could have been done better. I understood why he chose simple names for the two classes. Everyone wants to be Pretty, no one wants to be Ugly. But then I read the names of cities: New Prettytown, Uglyville, Crumblytown, Rusty Ruin, and thought, "It's like you're not even trying." Then there were things that weren't ever addressed, things that you'd expect to be addressed in a science fiction novel taking place in a futuristic society: Like why parents aren't involved in their children's lives, what kind of government is in place-->If Special Circumstances are in charge of keeping the peace, who gave them that job? And I was able to guess almost immediately from Shay and Tally's conversations about New Pretty behavior, that more than plastic surgery was going on on the operating table, although, that might be because I'm older than the target audience...(Who else noticed the shameless Smash Mouth shout-out?)
In some ways, Tally seemed to mature with the story, in others she regressed. The more pressures she had to deal with, the smarter she became, making decisions cautiously, instead of impulsively. On the other hand, there were numerous time where she could have and should have told the truth, and each time choosing to invent foolish, elaborate lies, rather than asking for help. Which make her a bit of an oxymoron in the end; she wants to do the right thing by her friends, but doesn't care how many people get hurt by her lies.
This book was certainly based on a thought provoking premise, but the story fell short of the concept.
Wynter Lee5.0 out of 5 stars Childhood Series
I read this series when I was younger and remember loving it. It’s still just as good but maybe a bit slower. When I saw a movie coming out for it I just knew I needed to read the books again because they usually butcher adaptions.