Pretties by Scott Westerfeld Review

Title: Pretties (Uglies #2)

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian

Page Count: 384 pages/435 KB

Book Type: Kindle ebook

Publisher: Simon Pulse

ISBN: 9781416936398

ASIN: B001L5BUPM

Picture from Amazon

*SPOILERS FROM UGLIES*

From Goodreads:  Gorgeous. Popular. Perfect. Perfectly wrong.Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she's completely popular. It's everything she's ever wanted.But beneath all the fun -- the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom -- is a nagging sense that something's wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally's ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what's wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold.Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life -- because the authorities don't intend to let anyone with this information survive.

*May contain a few small spoilers from Pretties...I will mark them. Spoilers from Uglies are fair game*

You can read my review of Uglies here. 

My Review: I love the cover on this one too. The twinkle in the girl’s eye draws me in. The tagline for this one is, “What happens when perfection isn’t good enough?” This leads us to believe that life isn’t as good for the “pretties” as the pre-16 year olds are lead to believe.

Once again, I really appreciated that Westerfeld addressed issues that are relevant to teens without being overly preachy. Superficiality is one of the main ones, but questioning authority and even questioning who you are is present throughout the book. *SPOILERS from Pretties* It becomes aware that even the pretties face societal issues when Peris makes the decision to go back to New Pretty Town instead of heading out into the wilderness and roughing it. He prefers to be blissfully unaware of the lesions on his brain and what they do. *END SPOILERS*

It was fun to see how the pretties live. I was overly intrigued with how and why the new pretties decided to alter their bodies for each new party or just because they felt like it. They get tattoos, put gems in their eyes and dye their skin. It is interesting that essentially these new pretties are perfect, yet they are still altering themselves to keep up with each new fad. It reminded me of the people who are addicted to plastic surgery. Tally even mentions that they are supposed to limit themselves to one transformation per week (I believe). Also, the pretties (especially in Tally’s group) will starve themselves, do dangerous stunts and even some cut themselves all to feel the rush and coherence it gives them. This just screams teen behavior and is mostly dangerous behavior. The parallels to our world are often striking and thought provoking in this series. 

I’m looking forward to reading Specials sometime! What do you think of this series?