I just finished reading Uglies by Scott Westerfield. I thought it was a really exciting book. It’s the perfect blend of action, adventure, and romance.

I would recommend Uglies to anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction or is just looking for something good to read.

Uglies follows the story of a teen girl named Tally. She lives in a world where everyone is considered “ugly” until they turn sixteen and receive major plastic surgery, turning them into a “pretty.” Tally longs for her sixteenth birthday when she will finally become a pretty. Tally’s best friend Peris has already turned sixteen and received the operation and when Tally sneaks into New Pretty Town to visit him, she meets another ugly, Shay, who’s spying on her pretty friends. Shay craves adventure and the unknown. Shay and Tally become fast friends. They sneak out to the rusty ruins at night and play tricks on the younger uglies. We see Shay begin to question their society’s views of beauty. 

The day before she turns sixteen, she decides to run away to a secret city called the Smoke, where no one has the operation, and if no one’s pretty, then no one’s ugly either. Shay asks Tally to come with her, but Tally doesn’t want to be ugly forever. She wants to get the operation and become beautiful. After Shay runs away, Special Circumstances, a mysterious group of cruel-looking pretties, tells Tally she must find and betray Shay or she will never become pretty. Tally is faced with a hard decision. Will she go after Shay and betray her friend, or will she stay ugly forever?

Join Tally as she learns about her city’s darkest secrets that aren’t so beautiful after all, and as she discovers there’s so much more to beauty than what meets the eye.