Uglies by Scott Westerfield

Tally Youngblood is an ugly. She lives in a dorm in Uglyville with her fellow ugly friends, well what's left of them anyway. Most of them are gone already, up to better and more fun things in the constant lights of New Pretty Town, including her best friend Peris. Tally keeps gazing out of her window across the water to New Pretty Town, yearning for the operation that will change her from ugly to pretty as soon as her 16th birthday rolls around. But after she sneaks into New Pretty Town to visit Peris, she pulls off a dangerous stunt that earns her a new best friend, Shay, and a reputation among all pretties.

Shay is against the operation, which Tally doesn't understand at all. Who could not want to be pretty, when it means your accepted, you get to have fun all night and well into the morning, and get to go to outrageous parties? Shay keeps going on about how unfair it is that nobody's given a choice in their society, but Tally wonders how anyone could question it. Who could complain when everyone is given a chance to be equals, and it eliminates all that ruined the people who came before them, or the Rusties, like war and hunger?

Shay also talks of a rebel camp called the Smoke that is full of uglies who don't want to become pretties. She speaks especially about the Smokies recruiter, David, who visits the Rusty Ruins in case of uglies wanting to come to the Smoke. Shay teaches Tally some new tricks, including a sport called hoverboarding (which is like skateboarding only in the air, and you fly using the board's magnetic lifters) and pull a couple of tricks. Shay and Tally get in a big fight on the eve of their birthdays, and Shay decides to leave to the Smoke, with or without Tally.

Tally chooses not to follow Shay, but takes her gift of instructions to get to the Smoke anyway. But when Tally's chances or being pretty are snatched away from her, and told by a cruel looking pretty that she must find the Smoke and turn Shay in or remain forever ugly. Tally's choices are surpirising and add interesting twists to the story. New surprises create turns no one could've seen coming. Tally also discovers that her world isn't all that it seems.

Scott Westerfield has created a wondrous tale of fiction and an incredible dystopia. This book is post-apocalyptic and full of adventure and, yes, even romance. Westerfield will have you on the edge of your seat with the suspence and torn between events just as the characters. I think that once you feel you are inside a book, and feel what the characters feel, see what they see, even experience the weather they do, as I have, then the author has done a magnificent job.

I've read the next book in the series, called Pretties, by now and am starting the third one, called Specials. I give it an A-, because as interesting as it was, sometimes Tally's thoughts and decisions were frustrating. After reading so many post-apocalyptic books, I've been introduced to many theories of how the world thinks it will be better after a destruction, but with yet another one under my belt, I keep wondering how much better any of those societies are than ours. These books teach us how not to be, or tell us in undertones how we are destroying the Earth, but with each new theory, I keep wondering if there is such a thing as a better alternative. Hopefully, there is, and maybe in Tally's society a cure can be found for their society. They may not be my favorite books, but they certainly are in my top say, 15. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have.