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| Pretties (Uglies Trilogy, Book 2) | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Category: Book
List Price: $8.99
Buy New: $3.22
You Save: $5.77 (64%)
New (57) Used (45) from $0.69
Avg. Customer Rating:  104 reviews
Sales Rank: 6251
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.9 x 1
ISBN: 0439891612
EAN: 9780689865398
ASIN: 0689865392
Publication Date: November 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW!! Ships fast!! Multiple quantity orders available. Gift quality.
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 99 more reviews...
 A Forest Full of Cave Men October 25, 2008
The 2nd book in the Uglies trilogy is weaker, but it was still hard to put down. I think I was put off a bit by all the valley girl "pretty" talk where everything is oh so "bubbly"! Westerfeld spent more time developing a romantic relationship in this book than in having his characters engage in adventure. The book was nearly to page 300 before something truly interesting happened. Tally, in an attempt to get away from the dystopic world she lives in, jumps out of a hot air b...more The 2nd book in the Uglies trilogy is weaker, but it was still hard to put down. I think I was put off a bit by all the valley girl "pretty" talk where everything is oh so "bubbly"! Westerfeld spent more time developing a romantic relationship in this book than in having his characters engage in adventure. The book was nearly to page 300 before something truly interesting happened. Tally, in an attempt to get away from the dystopic world she lives in, jumps out of a hot air balloon and lands in a forest full of cave men who think that she, with all her "pretty" plastic surgery, is a god.
I especially liked the part where the characters put out a fire by pouring champagne on it. Really?
I don't have as much of an urgency to pick up the final book in the trilogy, but I know I won't be able to resist it because it's nice reading books that catch you up in them such that you spend your entire evening finishing them.
 Enchanting Review: Pretties September 24, 2008
Pretties
Scott Westerfeld
Young Adult Paranormal
Rating: 4 Enchantments
Zane is a Pretty. However he has always been different than the stereotypical Pretty. He does not share the same attitude as them. He is more serious than the Pretties who all seem to share the same "blonde" mindset. Zane is also the leader of the clique known as the Crims. The Crims are pretties who act like the uglies. They play tricks and get into trouble. These are things that are unheard of in the Pretties community. The Crims goal is to stay bubbly. Bubbly is where they stay on almost an adrenaline rush.
Tally Youngblood is a Pretty. Tally has given herself up to the Specials so that she could get the antidote that will cure the lesions in the brains of the Pretties. Tally is introduced to the Crims and later on becomes the female leader of them. Zane and Tally work side by side to stay bubbly and get the antidote.
The story of the Pretties is about Tally and Zane defeating the Specials and helping the new smoke rise. Fighting alongside Tally and Zane are most of the Crims, the new smokies and some uglies. Zane and Tally get the antidote. It is two pills, and they each take one. Tally is cured, Zane is also but he has horrible headaches as a side effect. Shay, one of Tally's friends, becomes obsessed with Tally and finds that cutting yourself will also make you bubbly. She gets a lot of followers to start cutting themselves as well. The Crims try to escape from new Pretty Town to get to the New Smokies headquarters. This is not an easy task because the Specials are keeping the new Pretties in, and they are monitoring Tallies every move. While escaping everyone gets separated from each other and Tally gets lost without any gear to help her survival. When she gets to new smoke the doctors tell her that she was never cured by the antidote, she had cured herself somehow. And that Zane had nanobytes eating his brain the pill that she took was supposed to cure that. Zane has now lost his motor skills. The specials arrive because they had a tracking devise in his tooth. Tally refuses to leave Zane so the specials forcibly make her a special.
The Pretties kept me up all night reading. I had to work the next day on only an hour of sleep because I could simply not put it down! The book was different than the normal books I like. Futuristic but no aliens or overly science fiction. They talk about us the rusties which I thought was cool. I like how it opened my eyes on how we are destroying the planet, because the rusties almost kill everyone and the earth. The one thing that the book was missing was romance. There was a definite chemistry between Zane and Tally but I wish it would have been more elaborated on. Zane and Tally are going steady but they never get too mushy. They say I love you which are a big deal in the story. I like this because it seems that every relationship that teenagers have means that they are in love, but I wanted nice mushy romance. The other thing that was missing was all the definitions of future technology. It took me awhile to figure out what bubbly was even. I really like the way the book ended. Tally became what she was fighting so hard against, and it leaves you craving the next book.
Scott Westerfeld has written three other young adult series. To find out more about him and his books please visit www.scottwesterfeld.com
Krissy
ENCHANTING REVIEWS
July 2008
 too long winded August 28, 2008
I read The Uglies and could not put it down. It is a great book.
The Pretties annoyed me with the whole doing things to be "bubbly." They used this term all the time. That, and things are "happy making" and "pretty making" and "funny making." They were supposed to be like mindless robots, but this use of language got on my nerves.
I loved the Uglies and the description of the sights and sounds Tally experienced in "The Smoke." It was so exciting to watch Tally learn how to do simple things outside of her ultra modern city.
At the end of the Uglies when she turned herself in in order to help Shay become cured, I was so excited to see what would happen, when David would come rescue her.
It was so annoying how long it took for her to become reunited with David. Her friendshipe with Shay completely fell apart, and Shay ended up being hte completely mindless one, when in the first book, Shay was the adventurous one with a mind of her own who was all for staying ugly and running away.
I was just extremely disappointed in what I thought was going to be an extremely promising book.
Pretties or is it? July 19, 2008
Tally has become pretty and it looks like everything is working out for her at last. She pretty, she's popular, has a fantastic wardrobe and boyfriend, but looks can be deceiving and in this case they are. Tally has received a letter from her past self and remembers why she became pretty in the first place and why it needs to be fixed. This knowledge is dangerous and the authorities don't want her to live to talk about it.
good sequel, but not as good as the first July 11, 2008
Pretties is the second volume of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies Trilogy. It picks up almost exactly where Uglies left off and the story is fairly involved so I strongly recommend reading Uglies first. If, however, you decide to ignore me, here's a brief explanation of what's going on which will necessarily include spoilers (and yes I am quoting my own review):
"Uglies is set in the distant future after a mysterious global catastrophe precipitated changes to the foundations of what readers would call modern society. Fearful of war and violence cities now operate as independent states (think Renaissance Italy as opposed to contemporary Italy). Isolated and self-sufficient, the cities have agreed to certain standards for the greater good.
"New technology ensures that citizens never want for food or luxury items, weapons of any kind are largely illegal, and at the age of sixteen everyone undergoes a series of extreme surgeries to better conform to societal standards of beauty. The logic being that, since humans are preconditioned to respond to certain visual cues in each other already (big eyes are non-threatening, a clear complexion and good teeth indicate that a person is healthy), applying these beauty standards will reduce conflict and create a more harmonious society.
"But in a world where everyone is movie-star-gorgeous (oldies like Rudolph Valentino and Greta Garbo are considered "natural pretties"), normal people are so not pretty. In short, they're ugly."
At the end of the first book, our heroine Tally Youngblood also learns that normal people are smarter than the Pretties. As part of the government's plan to keep the population in line, Pretties' brains are surgically altered with lesions to make Pretties more complacent. The government's logic can be summed up in four dangerous words: for the greater good.
At the end of Uglies, knowing now that the operation has to be stopped, Tally makes the ultimate sacrifice--she allows herself to undergo the Operation in order to become an undercover operative of sorts. The only problem is that, because of the Operation, she forgets everything she learned about the Operation, the government, and perhaps most importantly about Special Circumstances (Westerfeld's interpretation of secret service/black ops types).
In other words, Tally starts Pretties with a basically clean slate. She and best friend Shay know that they lived with the resistance group known as The Smoke, but little else. Looking for something "bubbly" to do as Pretties, the girls decide to join the Crims--a clique known for pulling dramatic stunts in order to stay bubbly and consequently think a little more clearly than Pretties usually do. As Tally becomes more involved with the Crims and their leader, Zane, pieces of Tally's past begin to fall into place. But, the more Tally learns about her past, the more confusing things become as she has to decide between her past and her present.
Of the trilogy, this one is my least favorite. The characters, being Pretties, seemed the most unreal. Although Westerfeld evoked a very realistic world in Uglies it all rings a little less true here. I love how much slang these novels use and how easy it is to follow, but that too got to be a bit much.
The novel ends on a dramatic note, Tally once again rallying against those who would maintain the status quo. But at the same time, like in Uglies, she is once again a victim of circumstances. So, although the ending is great, it's also a bit too familiar. Since Pretties is part of a trilogy, it is a must-read to see what happens to Tally. But, in this reviewer's opinion, the second installment in the trilogy doesn't quite live up to the hype created by the first.
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