Book Review: Uglies by Scott Westerfield

This book was okay. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t overly good either. To be fair this book is not really my cup of tea, but I wanted to try it anyway to see if it would be something that I enjoyed. It ended up earning its three stars so… It was okay.

Likes:

The setting of the story was actually something that I enjoyed. The concept of the world that id around them to the places that we get to go and see as a reader. Leaving the remnants of the old cities was something that I found oddly beautiful, especially when we get to go see the abandoned amusement park. Why do they always seem more beautiful when they are destroyed? Other than that the city seemed to be fairly normal for a post-apocalyptic/ dystopian setting. There were class differences between people who were Pretty and people who were Ugly. Pretty people lived nicer than Uglies. The world outside of the city was wild, untamed, and still civilized. Just a community of people trying to rebuild, something that I admired even more than the materialism of Pretty town.

I also found Tally, the main protagonist of the book, to be very likeable. She is just a teen girl trying to live her life and make it to Pretty town. As the story progresses, Tally’s life grows more and more complicated. She is faced with one difficult decision after another and the inner conflict that she has with herself is something that I found fascinating. It also made her seem more human to me. This leads into the dynamic change in herself that she comes to at the end of the book. Like the characters of most novels, they are expected to evolve and learn about themselves or the world around them in some way, tally learns both. With this revelation, it makes her seem older and wiser than even most of the adults that we meet in the text.

Another thing that I enjoyed was the antagonist. They were exceptionally deceitful and horrifying. They enjoyed using their power to oppress those around them, but they also enjoyed tormenting with the mind. I just love myself a good antagonist.

Dislikes:

The first few chapters of the book were incredibly slow paced. I hardly remember what happened in them which makes me wonder if it was all just a big info-dump. Up until Tally and Shay really hit it off as friends, I was lost. From there though, it grew to be more interesting. I actually might have just put it down if I didn’t have to read it for a class, but I’m pretty resilient, and I pushed through.

SPOILER ALERT: the other thing that really annoyed me as a reader was the change in Shay at the end of the book. She become someone who was petty and really bothersome to those around her. Her ideals were completely erased and changed into something different. She also developed some other characteristics that I found to be annoying and by the end I was surprised that Tally had wanted to continue being her friend. Granted this is because of a choice that she made in the book as well as some otusideforces that she was unaware of at the time. So I’ll giver her that. However, I found her to be really admirable as well, just like Tally, until towards the end.

So yeah, this book was okay. I’m not sure at the moment if I would like to read the other books in the series since it ended on such a bad note. However, I did enjoy some parts of it and I am curious to know what happens to Tally, so I might read it after all. For now, I think I’ll let this one sit for awhile before I revisit it.