YA er... Saturday: Uglies by Scott Westerfield

I've been a bum of a blogger lately. I'm not sure what it was this week, but I didn't seem to get half the things done that I needed to do. Fortunately there are only two weeks of school left, and then I have a month of freedom before I sell my soul to nursing school. Right now my husband is here , at a biannual international meeting for my church. (This session is especially for men). So lucky me, I have time to catch up a bit on blogging. :)

Anyway...
Title: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfield
Genre: YA, dystopian
Publisher: Simon Pulse, 2005
Source: Provo Library

Uglies is set in a society where, at the age of sixteen, everyone undergoes a plastic surgery operation to make them "pretty." Their features are averaged out and they go to live in New Pretty Town, a place of partying, romance, and fun. Tally has spent her life wishing to be pretty. Her eagerness is intensified when her best friend, Peris, turns sixteen and moves on to New Pretty Town without her. Tally makes friends with another ugly, Shay, also missing her friends and eager to turn sixteen - or so Tally initially thinks. Soon she learns that Shay has other plans for when she turns sixteen - and those other plans bring Tally into a world far more complicated than she'd imagined possible.

After reading Leviathan, I knew to expect a slightly younger feel to this book. With that expectation, I really enjoyed the plot. I don't want to reveal too much, because part of the charm of the story for me was the fact that I had no idea what was going to happen. Suffice it to say that Westerfield's alternate reality is interesting, and Tally's adventures will keep you eager to learn more.

I also enjoyed the characters. The major characters, Tally, Shay, and David, all had very different personalities, something I sometimes find lacking in other books where main characters' personalities are a bit too similar. I also loved the relationships between all the characters, especially Tally and Shay's friendship. I loved how quickly their friendship developed and how close they became - I miss that about the younger years of high school. Thinking about it now, I met most of my good friends about the time when Tally and Shay met, when I was fifteen. The dynamic of their friendship just seems really legitimate. The romance in this story is also quite believable - who hasn't stayed up all night talking to a boy, only to be completely incompetent the next morning? Westerfield deals with themes of jealousy, first love, and friendship in a way that, despite being set in a completely new world, rings true.

I really like the questions that this book raises. What if everyone was "pretty?" How does the government stratify society by imposing that? In the book, Tally sees "artifacts" of books and magazines with "ugly" people, and she is revolted by them, but later, she learns to appreciate the uniqueness in each individual face. I think these are great questions for younger teens to ask themselves, especially in a society where eating disorders run rampant and teens are often ostracized into different cliques (I know all high schools aren't clique-ish, but many are).

The one thing I didn't love about the book was the writing style. Once again, this may be a result of the intended audience, but everything felt a little cheesy and occasionally dumbed down to me. The slang was so obvious that it wasn't believable to me. "New Pretty Town" seems like a region of an amusement park, not a legitimate town. It wasn't awful, but the cheese just put me off a little bit.

Overall, it was a fun, light read. I really think this is a great book for younger teens to read, and older teens and adults if they can get past the slightly younger writing and cheesiness.

Readability: Easy read.
Plot: 3.5
Characters: 4
Writing: 2.5
Personal response: 3
Overall: 3.25