"Uglies"

Uglies by Scott Westerfield

Book Club Pick

Pages: 406 Genre: YA dystopian

Rating: 1.5 Stars

Tally cannot wait for her sixteenth birthday when she will get the operation to turn her from a repugnant Ugly to a desirable Pretty. She longs for the day when her and her new friend, Shay, will get to spend all day doing nothing and having fun. Except Shay doesn't want to turn Pretty. Shortly before their birthday, Shay runs off, leaving Tally with instructions on how to join her in a society away from the Ugly/Pretty dynamic. Tally brushes her off, until the authorities bring her in and offer her a choice: turn in her friend and the secret society she tried to escape to, or never turn Pretty.

Honestly, this book's biggest crime is being boring. I tried really hard to assess if I felt that way because it's on the younger side of YA (putting me decidedly not in the age group) or if it just wasn't that well written, and I'm pretty sure it was the latter. Too much of the book is nonsense romance or traveling across an unexciting terrain, and I just can't bring myself to really care about it.

It felt like nothing actually happened in this book. I won't try to say that there was no action or anything, but many exciting moments happened entirely "off camera" or inexplicably. Particularly at the beginning of the book there were weird time cuts that were hard to follow and made us miss out on the end of some minor plot lines. Until Tally gets sent on her mission, the book is almost disorienting.

The world doesn't make sense. It seems like the utopia comes from eco-issues, but then the Pretty thing doesn't make any sense. Instead of having layers to the world, it truly seems like everything is perfect besides the Pretty/Ugly attitudes (and the "big twist"). It makes it harder to get invested in the world itself, because I don't really know what we're going to eventually be fighting against.

It was hard to get immersed in the story because the "right" opinion was so unclear. Obviously a book doesn't have to have a completely black and white story when it comes to what's right and what's wrong, but the main character should have a clear motivation for solving the problems. Tally just sort of stumbles across an opinion once she learns something that's impossible to justify while still seemingly subscribing to most of the major ethically-flawed opinions that the dystopian pushes onto her. I never got a sense of her reflecting or challenging these closely-held beliefs, so why am I meant to care at all?

Tally is really a horrible main character. The secret society exists entirely independently of her, and other than her causing problems (and seeing no consequences for it), she doesn't move anything forward. Things happen to her because she's the main character instead of being the main character because things happen to her, if that makes sense. When she's not being boring, she's actively lying and harming other people — something she's ultimately forgiven from. Or at least no one seems to care, because why would they? She's the main character, and it would be inconvenient for everyone to hate her.

The side characters are just as awful as Tally is. There's one main love interest named David who is just terrible. The concept of David (and particularly the way he contrasts Tally) could be interesting, but in reality he behaves and talks almost exactly the same way as Tally. I won't spoil it, but their upbringings were incredibly different. They should have had entirely different attitudes, but they just don't.

Their romance is probably the worst-written thing in the book. They have no chemistry, his trust in her is as unearned as his affections are, and I'd go so far as to say that the way their relationship is written undermines the entire "meaning" of the book, pushing it into a slightly misogynistic tone. Don't worry, girls who are probably the target audience, you don't need to be capitol-P Pretty! That's not where your self worth comes from! It actually comes from a man believing you're pretty! That's what really matters!

It's ridiculous. Write a romance if you must, but when Tally's already-minimal character development is based fully around a man's perception of her, it won't be worth reading.

Tally's friend, Shay, was almost okay, but about halfway through the book she became an entirely different person. With no explanation, she went from an independently-motivated girl to boy-obsessed and catty. Once again, everyone ultimately ends up talking and acting the same, so instead of having Shay and Tally be their own people, Shay ends up as an extension of her that exists purely to give us a shallow sense of conflict.

I'm probably one of the last people to read this book, so I doubt I'll do much to convince people to read or not read it. But if someone hasn't read it yet, I'd say the only merit to doing so would be knowing what people are referencing when they talk about it. Ultimately, there are better YA dystopian books out there.