“You had to want your mind to change. Maybe some people had always been pretty-headed, even back before the operation had been invented. Maybe some people were happier that way.”
– Scott Westerfeld, Pretties
Synopsis : Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted. But beneath all the fun — the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom — is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. . .Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life — because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.
The first book,Uglies taunted readers and Tally with the perfect bubbly world of New Pretty Town. Let’s face it we were all a little curious about what it was like to be a Pretty and Pretties does exactly that. Who doesn’t want to see what the champagne-swilling, party going, Jersey-shore like atmosphere is like first hand? Somehow at their bubbliest Westerfeld still made Tally and Shay almost likeable characters. This book explores the aftermath that ensues after the cure has been discovered.
Minor Spoilers
In Pretties we are introduced to a new character, Zane who is in a popular clique known as the Crims. I actually liked Zane, much better than David. Maybe it’s because I picture him as Darren Criss who plays Blaine from Glee and Harry Potter in A Very Potter Musical. Zane is a male version of Tally, he wants to rebel and that alone makes his relationship with Tally more believable and unique.
I feel like the book went off into strange territory for about 50 pages before getting back on track. There were a lot of odd derailments that make you worry for the character’s sanity like using starvation and self-mutilation as survival skills.
Despite its somewhat long-winded and roundabout story telling the novel does have its moments. One of the more interesting being when Tally and Peris are escaping and Peris decides to stay at the last minute.
Peris has been this idealized best friend for so long that it is the part in the book were Tally let’s go of the last thing that connects to her Ugly past.
Peris’s decision to stays brings up the idea that some people need to be pretty, even before the surgery was created. I think the Crims and Smokies are equivalent to those who challenge authority to make changes in the modern world.
As for those of us you sit by and watch the world go on ? Well. . . we are just pretty.
1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.