Uglies by Scott Westerfeld - Review

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Release Date: February 8th, 2005

Source: Amazon Books

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.”

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the UGLIES series. It is my favorite. Period.

The Uglies is about a futuristic, dystopian (with a tad of utopian) world where the Rusties (our generation) have died out because of their foolish attitude. This world is all based on looks- everyone has a cosmetic surgery at the age of 16, which makes them "pretty". 15-year-old Tally Youngblood can't wait to have this surgery, because once you are Pretty, you get to have fun all your life with parties and drinking. But she meets a girl, Shay, who doesn't want to be like everyone else. Tally has to decide if she wants to party everyday for the rest of her life, being pretty and just like everyone else, or to realize that what Shay is saying might be true.

There is a strong theme here -or multiple, depending on how you look at it-. The main theme that I noticed is the strong importance of individualism. Everyone in Tally's society is the same -pretty, bubbly, perfect- and there is almost no variety in personality or attitudes at all. Shay & Tally show their (sensible) views through their rebellious actions of travelling to the Smoke, where they can actually live.

I have to say this is one of the best series I have ever read. Of course, the first book is always the best, but I love the additions to the series as well. Westerfeld surely has an extremely creative imagination -- he has created hoverboards, rotating buildings, skintennas, sneak suits, and much more that will make you turn the pages so eagerly you won't realize you have been sitting in your chair reading for the past 3 hours and that you still have Chemistry homework to finish!

Go read this series now!! Thank you!

oh, and MAKE IT A MOVIE!