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A review by abby_ace_of_books
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
3.0
If I hear the pink sunset compared to cat vomit one more time, I am going to scream.
In my experience, the YA dystopias and sci-fis of the early 2000s are hit-or-miss for me; I either love them or hate them. Unfortunately for Uglies...it kind of fell flat for me. Maybe my expectations were too high, and I expected more social commentary than "ugly and intelligent good, vapid and pretty bad." Maybe I just didn't vibe with this book. All I'm saying is it's not a series I'm eager to finish.
The storyline is pretty simple and follows a lot of familiar tropes from the genre. Tally is an ugly, waiting for the day she turns 16 so she can be pretty and party all the time instead of doing...whatever it is uglies are supposed to do in their free time? Her new friend Shay invites her to join a rebellion, Tally says nope, and then suddenly the government is like, "hey, actually you're going to go spy on this rebellion for us because it makes sense to send a 16-year-old girl out into the woods with some spaghetti and a hoverboard." There was a fair amount of action in the last 25% of the book, but it wasn't enough to make up for Tally's annoying inner monologue. And as much as I like the implications of the ending, it doesn't erase the second-hand embarrassment I got when Tally just kept digging herself into a deeper hold.
I also didn't really like any of the characters, and I think it might have been the fault of the worldbuilding. When your setting requires your characters to either be stupid and hot or ugly and "morally-correct," it doesn't give a lot of room for interesting characters. I found David to be bland, Shay to be obnoxiously petty, and the rest of the cast to be equally two-dimensional. And, as I said before, Tally's inner monologue drove me nuts because her sense of morals is "wrong" until it gets changed in less than a minute, and that's literally the only character development she has. I think it would've been more interesting if the pretties actually engaged in interactions with the uglies so we could see the dynamics mix.
Uglies is an early YA dystopian novel about a world where beauty is the only thing that matters and a girl's journey in self-acceptance.
3/5
In my experience, the YA dystopias and sci-fis of the early 2000s are hit-or-miss for me; I either love them or hate them. Unfortunately for Uglies...it kind of fell flat for me. Maybe my expectations were too high, and I expected more social commentary than "ugly and intelligent good, vapid and pretty bad." Maybe I just didn't vibe with this book. All I'm saying is it's not a series I'm eager to finish.
The storyline is pretty simple and follows a lot of familiar tropes from the genre. Tally is an ugly, waiting for the day she turns 16 so she can be pretty and party all the time instead of doing...whatever it is uglies are supposed to do in their free time? Her new friend Shay invites her to join a rebellion, Tally says nope, and then suddenly the government is like, "hey, actually you're going to go spy on this rebellion for us because it makes sense to send a 16-year-old girl out into the woods with some spaghetti and a hoverboard." There was a fair amount of action in the last 25% of the book, but it wasn't enough to make up for Tally's annoying inner monologue. And as much as I like the implications of the ending, it doesn't erase the second-hand embarrassment I got when Tally just kept digging herself into a deeper hold.
I also didn't really like any of the characters, and I think it might have been the fault of the worldbuilding. When your setting requires your characters to either be stupid and hot or ugly and "morally-correct," it doesn't give a lot of room for interesting characters. I found David to be bland, Shay to be obnoxiously petty, and the rest of the cast to be equally two-dimensional. And, as I said before, Tally's inner monologue drove me nuts because her sense of morals is "wrong" until it gets changed in less than a minute, and that's literally the only character development she has. I think it would've been more interesting if the pretties actually engaged in interactions with the uglies so we could see the dynamics mix.
Uglies is an early YA dystopian novel about a world where beauty is the only thing that matters and a girl's journey in self-acceptance.
3/5