Book Review:Uglies

Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld, is about a girl named Tally Youngblood who lives in futuristic times where if you look normal, you're considered "ugly"and when you turn 16 you get an operation that makes you look "pretty". About 2 months before her 16th birthday she meets a girl, Shay, who has the same birthday as Tally but that is one of the only things they have in common. While Tally can't wait for her surgery so she can be with her best friend Peris (who is a guy that she has a little bit of crush on), Shay, would rather stay "ugly" and they live like us without all the futuristic technology. Nearing their birthday Shay runs away to the Smoke and Tally is left with a riddle from Shay on how to get to the smoke. Finally Tally's birthday arrives and as she thinks she's about to get the operation, she get taken to a secret building where the "specials" (basically some kind of top secret government for everyone) work where she is told she has to find Shay and expose the Smoke so they can shut it down. When Tally finally reaches the Smoke after a long trip she falls in love with it and a boy named David which makes her not want to go back. One night she decides she wants to stay at the Smoke and throws the device the "Specials" gave her so that if she sets it off they can find where she is and shut down the Smoke into a fire pit thinking that it will destroy it when it actually sets it off which sends her into a frenzy to save her friends from becoming "pretties".
The main themes of this book are friendship and don't judge a book by its cover. Friendship because Tally and Shay go through a lot but still come out as strong friends. First, Tally in a way "steals" David from Shay though David never really had romantic feelings toward Shay. Also, Tally accidentally sets off the device that brings the bad guys to the Smoke but Shay forgives her. The other theme would be don't judge a book by it's cove because something that can seem so perfect , like the surgery, can have dark secrets. Also, the Smoke is a good example because Tally judges the people as crazy idiots but when she gets to know them she realizes they actually have a better idea of what's going on than anyone else.
I would recommend this book to fast readers. That being said slow readers might also enjoy this storyline but if you're a slow reader I think you might get a little bored with it because of how long the book is and also the fact that there are some really boring spots in the book. Also, the fact that the book ends in basically the middle of the story making you either ask a friend who has read the book what happens next or actually read the book (which is just about as long) kind of leavers with this wtf?!? feeling because as you get closer to the end you're like "Thank God I'm almost done finally all my questions will be answered!" and then there's a twist and then there's no more pages and it sucks. So basically read the book if you want to read a really long book that honestly isn't that worth it.

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