92. Uglies

Uglies. Scott Westerfeld. 2005. 425 pages. [Source: Library] [4 stars] [YA dystopia, YA fiction, YA speculative fiction]

First sentence: The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

My thoughts (preview): I first read this one the year it released. It was LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I thought it was fabulous. I reread it as an audio book in 2018 and hated the narrator. I didn't blame the book, just the narrator for throwing me out of the story. Now that there is a movie adaptation, I was curious to revisit the book. 

From the original review in 2007 for my blog: 

I have nothing but good memories surrounding Uglies. My first introduction to Miss Tally Youngblood, trickster fifteen year old, was in the fall of 2005. From the early summer sky was the color of cat vomit to I'm Tally Youngblood...make me pretty, I was hooked. So much so that I went out to buy my own copy of the book the very next morning.  

From the original non-blog review in 2005:

Set three to four hundred years in the future, Uglies, a dystopia, focuses on a global community of pretty people. Tally Youngblood introduces readers to this picture-perfect community where appearances are not a matter of one's genes but a matter of extensive plastic surgeries planned by the Community of Morphological Standardss. Tally and Shay are best friends awaiting their sixteenth birthdays and their surgeries after which they'll leave Uglyville behind and join the New Pretties. But Shay doubts that the "Pretty Committee" is as concerned with equality and justice as it appears, suspecting that ulterior motives may lay behind the surface. Days before her sixteenth birthday, Shay runs away leaving a cryptic message for her friend to find the way to Smoke, the rebel community of "ugly" outsiders. When the authorities discover Shay's disappearance, Tally is asked to make the hardest decision of her life: betray Shay and the rebel community to the authorities or face living life ugly.

Uglies is a fast-paced novel taking a typical YA topic--self esteem, conformity, and the perception of beauty--and treating it in a new and ultimately satisfying way by speculating about where current values of beauty and perfection might lead us as a society if taken to the extreme. By setting Uglies in the future instead of a contemporary high school, Westerfeld is able to provide reflection and commentary on a serious topic in a new and original way.

My thoughts: The book is decidedly better than the movie--no surprise. Though I will admit that possibly movie-Shay is better than book-Shay. I don't know if I found book-Shay super-incredibly annoying the first time around, but in this recent reread and in the audio book reread, I found her almost insufferable. The plot is DIFFERENT. I haven't decided which changes were for the best and which weren't. Some things do seem to make better sense. But mostly it just felt rushed and like there wasn't much depth or substance. I also think that it might make for a better animated adaptation. It was hard for the concept of "pretties" and "uglies" to come across since this everyone is already glam. 

I definitely don't love-love-love it the same way all these years later. 

© 2024 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews