Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Lisa

in a sentence or so: Tally is 15 and Ugly. the good news is, on her 16th
birthday she gets to have the surgery that makes her Pretty - and then
life is one big party! until she meets Shay, a girl who is just fine
the way she is and knows of a place where everyone is Ugly. which leads
Tally to the question: why would anyone want to stay Ugly for life?

Tally's best friend Peris
turns pretty about a month before Tally is able to. while spying on him
one night in New Pretty Town, Tally runs into Shay. Shay is also spying
on her Pretty friends, but lacks the desire to join them that Tally
has. but - they are both currently friendless, and become prankster
friends pretty quickly. when Shay tells Tally mere days before their
surgery (same birthday = same surgery day) that she intends to run away
to the Smoke and stay Ugly forever, Tally is heartbroken her friend
will not be there with her in New Pretty Town. Tally has resigned
herself to live life without Shay, until Special Circumstances (super
creepy organization) decides to use Tally as a spy. Tally is faced with
the choice to either become a spy and betray the Smoke - or stay Ugly
forever...

i really dug the futuristic / sci-fi aspect to this. it wasn't over the top sci-fi (which, for the record, i am okay with), but had a lot of potential realism in it. sure there were hover boards and dehydrated food and interface rings, but nothing was really that
outlandish. which i think was the whole point. but anyway, Tally's
journey and decision making was interesting. without being too spoilery, i will reveal that there is a love interest at some point (other than Peris) which is super cute.

while
i am interested in the rest of the series (Pretties, Specials, Extras),
i was not super in love with this. i think it picked up during the
second and third sections, but a lot of it was explaining what things
were like, how society had evolved from the Rusties
(that's you and me folks) into the society they have now, etc... which
was necessary, but not the most riveting thing for me to read.
regardless, i enjoyed this book and am looking forward to seeing how
the rest pan out!

fave quote: "Sometimes Tally felt like she could almost accept brain damage if it meant a life without reconstituted noodles." (367)

fix er up: i felt like it took forrreevvverrrr to get to the action of the book.