Book Review (Best Sellers)

(Angle #1) Uglies by Scott Westerfield

     Uglies is a dystopian novel about a future society in the ruins of the world where everyone is ugly.  From the moment you are born to your sixteenth birthday, you are considered an Ugly and must live in Uglyville as such.  Everyone dreams of turning sixteen where they’ll get a life-changing operation to look like all the Pretties in New Pretty Town.  But Tally makes a friend named Shay, who doesn’t really want to become a Pretty, which is absolutely absurd, and Shay runs away just before her sixteenth birthday to an old place almost unheard of by the citizens of Uglyville called “The Smoke” to meet a boy named David whom Tally isn’t sure even exists.  Tally isn’t comfortable with the idea of leaving the Society with Shay, so she remains in Uglyville as she awaits her Pretty operation.  But when that day comes, the Specials had found out she knew about Shay’s illegal leaving of the Society and blackmailed Tally into betraying Shay and the possibly make-believe people of The Smoke.  Tally is so desperate to become pretty that she follows through, but when she arrives and finds out something so horrifying about becoming pretty that she’s not even sure she wants it anymore, and has to make a choice.

     The book is riveting and you can’t put it down for multiple chapters at a time! The plot was great because it was unique; Tally chose not to betray Shay and the other people who live in The Smoke, but actually betrayed them anyway (on accident) because the Specials had chipped her (it was unexpected for sure).  The main character, Tally, for most of the book was not likeable because she had such different views than almost anyone nowadays would; she knew and embraced that everyone was ugly before they got an operation that made everyone look almost exactly the same.  No one really understands her point of view while reading the book, but later on they do because Society really changes people and has a huge influence on what they think of themselves and others, and that’s really all Tally was being impacted by. 

     “Why can’t tally understand how messed up her society is?” That’s simple.  It’s because she doesn’t see it from somebody else’s shoes, all she sees is the inside of her society: she’s like a puppy in a store; she hasn’t considered that there’s any other way to live besides this one yet.  But that all changes when she goes to The Smoke and reads into their lifestyle.  The novel’s purpose is really to show people that everyone’s beautiful, and you can’t let society change how you feel about yourself and other people.  Westerfield was strong in developing Shay and David as characters, but Tally was a bit weak because she is basically only modeled by the society and doesn’t really have any specifically different character traits than anyone else (it might have been more interesting had she really had a love for one thing, like a hobby or something).  Also Tally was weak in the scene where she realizes she fell in love with David, and throws her necklace (it was something a Special gave her with a button on it that she could press whenever she wanted them to come and get everyone from The Smoke, and that would be the time when she could become a Pretty at last) into the fire.  That was really stupid, because if that were me (she’s about as smart as me I think, they still go to school in their society) I would have just stuck it to a bird or something and sent them off the guard, rather than damaging it in a fire which I would have known would’ve sent the Specials swarming to the area!  That was a weakness in the author’s plot, but beside that the plot was really strong.

     This book deserves 9/10 stars because it was really fun to read and you’ll get excited  whenever it tells you Tally’s thoughts because with those you can predict what will happen next (the fun part is sometimes you’re wrong and will be shocked by it).  It doesn’t get that last star though because of the hooked ending (super annoying) and because of the scene I described above; Tally’s not dim-witted, but that action was so it was really out-of-character.