Uglies (Uglies #1)

This book was can be totally unengaging to me at times. I've seen this book on bookshelves but i didn't feel like reading it but after passing by it so many times, i decided to give it a go.
It started out alright- Tally tricking her room and sneaking out, bungee jumping etc- but it started getting boring and dragging. I decided to stop reading it many times but i hate leaving a book unfinished so i carried on.
I liked the idea of pretties and specials. This may sound weird but i loved the Special Circumstances, i loved the idea of these secret unstoppable beings trying to keep the world safe and prevent things from outside getting in. Stuffs like hover-cars and hover-boards however, felt so unoriginal to me but i was glad that i read it to the end as it miraculously turned interesting.
The thing that made me sad was Shay turning pretty- been made into what you never wanted to be can be devastating.
Scott Weterfeld has a good concept about how something can be so perfect and yet so evil at the same time.

I found this a great book. Taking a hard look at humanity. In a world driven by beauty obsessed society can one person truly stay unique. This book take a look at peer pressure in the purest form for any sixteen year old fitting in is a major part of life. We look at Tally, a strong main character, to stay true to herself and be an individual. Filled with self doubt and confusion Tally has to decide to change into what society accepts or rage against society. We cheer her on as she fights to be herself in a world that rewards conformity. This book makes us care about all the characters and root for them to succeed in the face of insurmountable odds. This book pulls you in and keeps you reading with the wonderful world Scott Westerfeld creates. This book is for anyone who thinks being beautiful will solve all their problems

This has by far got to be my favorite dystopian world concept: getting a surgery to make yourself biologically undeniable at the age of 16. Who needs a driver’s license, anyway?

Scott Westerfeld has such great writing skills in that he’s able to make a very believable futuristic world with none of the usual farfetched concepts found in sci-fi. The world isn’t inhabited by alien species from far away places and there are no evil intergalactic warlords. Instead, Westerfeld elaborates on the dangers of our technologies if we let them get out of hand. Most specifically, Westerfeld discusses our culture’s obsession with looking good and what can happen if plastic surgery goes too far.

My favorite interaction with “Uglies” is the experience you have as a reader with Tally. At first you can’t help but feel so sorry for her that she is being held back from getting the surgery to make her biologically irresistible. You root for her to find Shae in the Shade until you realize that there is so much more to the surgery than you initially realized. Is the surgery good or is there a deeper more sinister purpose the government has behind giving all of this surgery free of charge? Westerfeld creates such magnificent tension in this world by making Tally and the reader constantly second guess whether or not this surgery is good or bad.

The other aspect of this book that I can’t get enough of is the concept of a person being undeniably beautiful. While Westerfeld does give basic physical characteristics of a person such as hair and eye color, the reader then gets to fill in the blanks by making each character look undeniably beautiful to themselves. This is very similar to the whole Helen of Troy concept in which she is never physically described so the reader can imagine who he or she would see as the most beautiful person in the world.

Without a doubt readers should check out Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies” to get dropped into a seemingly perfect future that just may not be as beautiful as it seems.

I LOVED the concept of this book. How everyone is an "ugly" (a normal person) and then when they turn sixteen they get an operation and become a Pretty (pretty much a person who is perfect in every way).

Tally Youngblood is a fifteen-year-old who is one of many who ABSOLUTELY CAN'T WAIT to become a pretty like the rest of them and join her best friend Peris, who's already over on the other side living the good life. Apparently. Then Tally meets Shay, a VERY tricky ugly (she breaks the rules a lot), and after a while of hanging out, Shay confides to Tally that she doesn't want to become pretty - she wants to escape to a place outside in the wild called the Smoke. Tally refuses to go, btu then in the end she has no choice because Special Circumstances (the bad guys) give her a choice: go to the Smoke and betray them, or never turn pretty at all.

So, in Tally's opinion (a pretty stupid one, if you ask me, actually) there is no choice at all, she si desperate to become a Pretty. So off she goes, to the Smoke.

This book is full of deception upon deception, with choices and this dystopian future in the mix, this book is impossible to put down once you pick it up. I'm serious, I actually did not put this down after I picked it up. I started reading late at night, hoping to settle down before going to sleep, and then I ended up staying up until midnight ( a bad idea, since I had school the next day :P)

I both loved and hated the cliffhanger at the end, and then of course i just had to pick up Pretties, and then the cliffhanger at the end of THAT led me to finish the series in four days flat.

When she learned about how being a Pretty kind of destroys your brain, I really wasn't very surprised. So now the question was this: your looks or your brain? I think the answer is quite obvious, but then of course Shay just had to get herself captured by the Specials and turned into a bubble-brained Pretty.

I thought it was pretty stupid on Tally's count to give herself up to become a Pretty, but then I suppose she was just thinking about the rest of the city and Scot needed a way to continue the series.

About the characters. At the start, I loved Shay even more than Tally, because she was just so fun and daring and thought by herself that I really liked her. But I hated it when she got herself turned into a Pretty and then a Special at the end of Pretties.

This is an amazing book that everyone should give a go.

Considering this was on my wish list, I was very much looking forward to reading it. I must say, I was greatly disappointed. It started off well, introducing us to Tally and her utalitarian world. The story held my attention for about the first 100 pages before I started to become frustrated with the plot development and the fact that I wasn't connecting to any of the characters.

There is one goal: to be a Pretty.

Tally longs to join the folks in New Pretty Town and become what society deems as 'perfect'. After the first 100 pages, I started to get bored as the story was just dragging along. There was always constant movement, yet the story was not progressing. Many scenes lacked significance. At times, I felt as if I was in a parked car, and everything around me was moving. Although we get to see Shay and Tally go on adventures, it felt as if the story wasn't going anywhere. I felt as if I could do without those scenes as they didn't add much to the story. I wanted Westerfeld to just get to the point and stop lollygagging.

The story just didn't fly off the pages for me. I didn't feel the presence of the character, I didn't particularly care for the romance that was forming between Tally and David nor did I care much for how the story would end. I skimmed a few pages, particularly towards the end, which I don't like to do, as I feel I'll miss out on important information. It's a good concept. It just wasn't executed well. At least, that's how I feel.

Westerfeld writes well, but the story just didn't grab me. Uglies was an okay read, but I don't think I'll be continuing on with the rest of the books in the series.

One of my older reviews!

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.

What a stunning idea, how could someone come up with such a awesome story? Uglies (normal people in my opinion) are people who haven't undergone surgery to become pretty (people who went under surgery to become stupid. Who would do that? I wouldn't!!). Tally is waiting for her birthday, the day she becomes pretty. But a few weeks until the very special day, Tally becomes friends with Shay, another Ugly. Shay tells Tally that being pretty is awful, she tries to convince her to leave, but to no avail. Shay leaves and Tally is caught up in her escape, she cannot become pretty until she finds the Smoke.

This book is full of choices, lies and hover boards, that will keep you eternally gripped in it's hold. I finished this book in one day since it was so good. I thought the cliffhanger was great, good idea Scot, great way to earn more money, you just need to know what happens.

I disliked the part where Tally volunteers to become pretty, after all that we learned about the consequences of becoming pretty. I thought that was pretty stupid (in Tally's case, not the authors, in that it was clever). I loved Shay quite a bit, but I hated it when she became pretty, and when in the Pretties book how she becomes special. She goes out of line my friends, out of line. I hope she she see the truth someday.

I recommend this book for 12+. Hopefully it will draw in more ever starving prey, like it did for me.

my opinion:

-on the characters: I liked that the girls ruled in this book. They (Tally and Shay) dared to do more than anyone. And the fact that a man wrote this book makes it even more fantastic. Tally is this girl you want to have as a friend, but you are too shy for. (or at least, I'm to shy for being her friend) and Shay is this one girl that is pretending always. Pretending that she dares to do everything. Pretending her life is perfect. But you will find out her life is not perfect after all when you get to know her better...
-on the future the book displays: Okay, this is very hard to say without spoilers. I liked the world at first, it seemed all perfect and better. But when you get to know this world and its secrets you will be horrified! There are some pretty cool inventions like hoverboards on which you can fly and bungeejackets with which you can bungeejump without the elastic cord :D
-on the way the book was written: The way this book was written annoyed me, a lot. It was way to simply written. Example (book) She wore a green T-shirt. (better) She wore a shirt. It was green, with a few spots on it that showed how often it was already worn. The shirt was a little bit oversized, but she looked very good in it. (or whatever) That was a very bad example, but I hope that you get my point
-on the cover: This cover sucks! There also are other versions of this book, and their covers are way more pretty. But I still think the cover has something to do with the books
-the end: Great, unespected, but a torture. I will say it always, so also now: I hate cliffhangers!

total:
I liked this book, I even liked it very much! The amounts of girlpower, romance and hate are perfectly balanced. I think this book is more enjoyable for children a little younger than me, about 11-12 years old. It was a pageturner, but I could put it away, so it was not a very pageturnery pageturner... I'll give this book

3.5 stars

The very title of the book suggests all the themes and morals that the author wants you to take away from it; I mean, seriously, a book titled Uglies. That said, on to the review.

The writing style was average. Nothing awful, but nothing quite outstanding either.

Tally has got to be one of the least relatable, least likable characters in all of YA. I found her to be selfish, weak, shallow, and unloyal. It takes meeting a boy she has only known for a little bit for her to decide not to betray her friends, rather than thinking about her friends when she made that decision. Yes, she’s flawed…so flawed I wanted, several times, to smack her in the face for being so superficial and actually caring so little about the friends she has had for months. And reading a story from the point of a view of a character that I absolutely despise will do nothing for that book’s reputation in my mind. At least there are some decent characters in the book.

The premise of the book is great! I’m going to assume you read the summary, so I don’t have to summarize it. It’s original (for dystopian), and though one of its themes is rather obvious, it is extremely relevant to today’s society, in which models and celebrities are admired for being underweight. I, unfortunately, felt as if the plot was going almost nowhere. It felt too much like a setup for the next book, rather than being unique and individual in and of itself. For a book that is over 400 pages long, all the necessary plot points can be summarized way too quickly, and most of the time, when there actually was some sort of action going on, I couldn’t bring myself to care about the characters enough to actually care about the action.

My review’s a bit harsh, but that’s mainly because of the bad impression Tally left on me. A lot of other people seemed to love this book, so I’d recommend this book for: lovers of dystopian, lovers of romance, and more. If you have no patience for either of these things, as they are both extremely common on today’s YA shelves, don’t bother.