English language
Published March 16, 2012
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.
No sé si le doy un 3 o un 3,5. Por ahora lo dejo en 3, y luego ya veré.
En general me gustó, aunque había varias cosas que no me cuadraban mucho o me desesperaban.
Entertaining YA fiction that comes with all the usual tropes (female heroine, surprise love interest, love triangle) and none of the addictiveness of e.g. The Hunger Games or Divergent.
Tally is almost 16, the age when you turn from an Ugly to a Pretty through plastic surgery. On your 16th birthday you get whisked away for surgery to spend your life from thereon in New Pretty Town, partying and having fun. But then Tally meets a new friend, Shay, who doesn't follow everyone's dream and would rather run away from the city to remain Ugly and free. When she flees, the authorities get ahold of Tally and force her to follow her friend, or she will remain an Ugly her whole life...
I really wanted to find out how this all came to be, from the collapse of the life of the so-called Rusties to this life of plastic surgery …
Entertaining YA fiction that comes with all the usual tropes (female heroine, surprise love interest, love triangle) and none of the addictiveness of e.g. The Hunger Games or Divergent.
Tally is almost 16, the age when you turn from an Ugly to a Pretty through plastic surgery. On your 16th birthday you get whisked away for surgery to spend your life from thereon in New Pretty Town, partying and having fun. But then Tally meets a new friend, Shay, who doesn't follow everyone's dream and would rather run away from the city to remain Ugly and free. When she flees, the authorities get ahold of Tally and force her to follow her friend, or she will remain an Ugly her whole life...
I really wanted to find out how this all came to be, from the collapse of the life of the so-called Rusties to this life of plastic surgery but you only get glimpses. It is entertaining to read, though Tally frequently got on my nerves. That's what happens when you read books about teenagers. The ending is a giant whopping cliffhanger, and so I guess I'll move on to the next book.
3.5 stars, all things considered.
It kept me entertained enough, but it's hardly a good book, so I can't in good faith recommend it. It tries to depict a dystopian world in which... well, you probably know the premise by now. But the world is too consumed with this one single feature. For a world situated centuries after the so-called "rusties", children there sure know a lot about us. More than I know of the life of people who lived in the 19th century, that's for sure. All it all, it just doesn't pass the bar for suspension of disbelief. The world is not coherent enough, it's too dependent on our point of view, so it remains one-dimensional, and since it is lacking in any insights on our own society, the whole thing becomes an exercise in futility.
I won't be reading the next books in the series.
It kept me entertained enough, but it's hardly a good book, so I can't in good faith recommend it. It tries to depict a dystopian world in which... well, you probably know the premise by now. But the world is too consumed with this one single feature. For a world situated centuries after the so-called "rusties", children there sure know a lot about us. More than I know of the life of people who lived in the 19th century, that's for sure. All it all, it just doesn't pass the bar for suspension of disbelief. The world is not coherent enough, it's too dependent on our point of view, so it remains one-dimensional, and since it is lacking in any insights on our own society, the whole thing becomes an exercise in futility.
I won't be reading the next books in the series.
I expected better writing I guess. The story itself is ok, the idea that a future generation only keep their children around while they are 'littlies' sending them off to a sort of boarding school when they become 'uglies' and then on their 16th birthday giving them life changing surgery to make them perfect and pretty is a great idea. The idea that some of the young teens want to rebel and the plot twist and secret they discover when they do...it's got the making of a great story but read more like a sell for a movie, maybe that's the trouble with YA fiction, everyone wants a movie, so less effort is put into the writing. The characters are not very rounded or deep, there is not much back story to anyone. It's a shame. Will I read the rest? Maybe if I see them in the library, I …
I expected better writing I guess. The story itself is ok, the idea that a future generation only keep their children around while they are 'littlies' sending them off to a sort of boarding school when they become 'uglies' and then on their 16th birthday giving them life changing surgery to make them perfect and pretty is a great idea. The idea that some of the young teens want to rebel and the plot twist and secret they discover when they do...it's got the making of a great story but read more like a sell for a movie, maybe that's the trouble with YA fiction, everyone wants a movie, so less effort is put into the writing. The characters are not very rounded or deep, there is not much back story to anyone. It's a shame. Will I read the rest? Maybe if I see them in the library, I wouldn't buy them though. I neither know nor care about any of the character to really be bothered about what happens to them next.
