Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

For most people, turning sixteen means getting a drivers license and a little more freedom from mom and dad. For Tally Youngblood it means literally shedding her skin and becoming an entirely different person. She, like every other sixteen year old, will undergo an operation that changes her from an ugly into a pretty. From there she'll move into a mansion on the pretties side of town and spend her days partying and having fun with all of her old friends who've already had the operation.

Then she meets Shay, who's scheduled to have her operation at the same time as Tally. The two have tons of fun together and Shay teaches her all kinds of new pranks and tricks for her hoverboard. Their time together is marred, however, when Shay tells Tally that she doesn't want to become pretty and live a frivolous life. She tells Tally about a person called David who lives outside the city in the ruins of how the area used to be, with others who don't want the operation. When Shay does run away, Tally isn't surprised. What she wasn't expecting, however, was for the authorities to tell her that if she doesn't track down her friend and the others like her and turn them in, she can't have the operation and will have to stay ugly forever.

I know this book is a couple of years old, but I just read it last week. I love love loved it and couldn't put it down! My only regret is that I read it too fast, as I don't have the sequels and they're currently checked out of the library.

This is one of those books that's so hard to talk about without revealing spoilers, so I'll try my best to be as general as possible. I love that it's such a smart book, without patting itself on the back for being so clever. I laughed when it was mentioned that there's a committee that updates the standards of beauty every few years -some things never change. Also, that in a world that operates under the newest and latest technology, Tally feels disgust at the possibility of sitting at a wooden table.

Not every bit of information is put right out on the table, either. Tally and Shay live in what is presumably the rebuilt United States, but there are only hints as to what caused it to be destroyed or how long ago that was. They allude to things that used to be problems, like eating disorders and how through the operation and government standards of attractiveness, that's not a worry anymore. I don't think it's a huge leap to tell you that in this book, as in most books like this, the government is the enemy. You don't really find out to what extent until the latter half of the book, but I loved all of the hints throughout about what the government was doing to suppress individual freedom and train everyone to believe that they're ugly.

Ultimately, what I really enjoyed is that the morality isn't so obvious or clear cut. It all depends on what you'd prefer. Yes, the government is the enemy, but presumably they really believe that this operation is a good thing, that it improves upon past societies. In some ways it really does. Uglies poses a lot of interesting questions in that regard. What is beauty? What are you willing to give up in order to attain that standard? Will it bring you happiness? How much of what you believe is due to the influence of outside sources?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to camp out in front of my local library to wait for someone to return Pretties.

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