Uglies Scott Westerfeld

Set in a time period a couple of hundred years in the future, this story follows a young girl named Tally Youngblood. In Tally’s city, and all the other small cities of the world, there is a mandatory operation when you’re sixteen, that turns you from your natural born looks of an ‘ugly’ to supermodel gorgeous. Every teen is counting down the days until they can get the operation and cross the river that separates Uglyville, with uglies of all ages and a life of child’s play, to New Pretty Town, the home of never-ending parties, fame and happiness.

For Tally, the past few months have been unbearable as she waits for her late birthday of September. Tally has already seen her best friend, Peris, across the river and with only a couple of months to go until her operation day, Tally decides that she can’t stand it anymore, and she secretly crosses the river into New Pretty Town to see Peris. After this night-time excursion, Tally meets another ugly girl named Shay, and the two are fast friends when they discover that they share the same birthday.

However, it’s not fun and games any more when Shay starts to become touchy about the operation. She begins to speak about how she doesn’t believe that everyone’s natural looks are that bad, a concept that is hard for Tally to see, because of what the cities taught them. Shay makes plans to run away into the wild, to find a man named David and a place called the Smoke, where everyone lives like the Rusties (the name given to people of our time) and pre-Rusties, cutting down trees, burning wood, and living outdoors. The Smoke is a place to escape the operation, and stay ugly forever. When Shay tries to convince Tally to go, which fails, but a few days later, when Shay does leave, she gives Tally an coded message, which turns out to be directions to the Smoke.

It’s only a week until Tally’s birthday, and she can’t wait. But when she’s picked up for the operation, things go wrong. Instead of being taken to the hospital, Tally is taken to a place called Special Circumstances, home of the cities secret operators. Specials are also referred to as ‘cruel pretties’ because their surgery gives them cruel, yet beautiful features, along with inhuman speed, strength and reflexes. They are mostly believed to be a myth; someone to blame when things go wrong. The Special that Tally meets, Dr. Cable, tries to convince Tally to follow Shay to the Smoke, then activate a tracker so that the Specials can take it down. Dr. Cable gives her a terrible choice. Betray her friend, or never become pretty.

Tally decides to make the trip to the new smoke, a trip that takes her several days by herself. She makes it there alone, but she doesn’t get the chance to set off the tracker for the first few days, and by that time she’s beginning to like life in the Smoke, including the mysterious David. When she goes to meet his parents, Tally learns and awful truth. The operation wasn’t just made to make everyone equal; it was invented to keep everyone under control. When a teenager goes under the knife, along with their supermodel looks, they get tiny lesions in their brains that affect the way they think, making them shallow and agreeable, and also easier to control. This is how the cities keep from falling back into the Rusty days. This horrible truth helps Tally to make an important decision. When she decides to stay in the Smoke forever, Tally tries to destroy the tracker, a heart pendant, by tossing it into a fire. What she doesn’t know, is that it’s designed to send out a signal if it’s damaged. When Tally wakes up the next morning, she finds the Smoke in chaos, and Specials raiding the small civilization, rounding up the Smokies to take them back to their cities. She and David escape, and go back to Tally’s city to rescue everyone else. They manage to rescue Maddy, David’s mother, and a couple of other Smokies, along with Shay, who is now pretty. They find that Maddy may have found a cure to the lesions, and with pre-given consent, Tally goes back to the city with Shay to become pretty, so she can test the experimental cure.

This story had me hooked from the beginning. Everyone wishes that they could control what they looked like at some point in their lives, and this book easily expresses those insecurities people, especially teens, have. Westerfeld uses this story, along with its two sequels and a cast off, to tell teens that they shouldn’t let anyone tell them how they’re supposed to look or how to live life.