I've decided I'm going to dedicate 2010 and at least this last couple of months of 2009 to clearing out the excess. I haven't been to the library in a long time, either (except to drop off donations), although our library usually doesn't carry what I'm interested in so I've always ended up buying from our perpetual library sale. I'm really enjoying this series I hope you enjoy them, too. Remember the tattoos and the jeweled eyes? So, even if they hadn't lost their personalities, an all-beautiful society was a little on the dull side.

I think part of his point was that all the pretties looked so perfect that they had to start adding extra features to distinguish themselves, so being beautiful wasn't even enough. It's definitely a creepy thought, having people completely separated by looks. This is, I believe, my 5th book for the YA Dystopian Challenge - obviously a challenge I am diving into with enthusiasm. I hope to read Specials, the third in the series, soon. Not quite as thought-provoking and discussion-worthy as the first in the series, but a terrific read and highly recommended. In the first half of the book, those hyphenated adjectives were way overdone and then he eventually toned it down.Ĥ/5 - A solid, enjoyable continuation of a fascinating series. For example, instead of saying something made Tally dizzy, he would say it was 'dizzy-making'. Like Uglies, there were times I thought the author did something that I'd have edited out if I had a red pen and the power (mwah-ha). The further I got into it, the more I liked it. I'm not going to say much more about the plot because I really don't want to spoil the read for anyone, but I will say that I enjoyed Pretties almost (not quite) as much as Uglies. You may come out from behind your chair.**** Knowing she was on the verge of being caught by the Specials, a police force of cruel-looking pretties, Tally wrote a note to herself to be delivered after her surgery - a surgery that would take some of her memory away. During her time in the Smoke, she found out there's more to the Pretty surgery than meets the eye.

Out in the Smoke (the world where the rebellious few who don't want to go through surgery live), Tally found love, betrayed a friend and inadvertantly caused a disaster.

****WARNING*****Skip this bit if you don't want to read a potential spoiler!!!!**** However, there's a little bit of spoilery stuff, here - which will also spoil Uglies, if you haven't read it, so beware. It's not giving anything away to say that in Pretties, Tally (the heroine of Uglies) has gone through the surgery to make her beautiful and now lives in New Pretty Town. I read and reviewed Uglies (<-link to my review), the first in Scott Westerfeld's dystopian series about a world where people are divided by looks, and enjoyed it so much that I rushed out to buy the second and third in the series.

The pretties scott westerfeld