Pretties (Uglies, #2)

by Scott Westerfeld

[readingwithwrin]

“With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.”

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MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
At the end of Uglies we see Tally and giving herself up to become pretty in order to be an experiment for a possible cure for keeping everyone “bubbly” as the new pretties call it. At the start of pretties we see Tally as a new pretty partying and trying to adjust to not living in the wilderness. While she can’t remember much from her old life she knows that there’s something else out there and wishes she could go back in a way.

When she is going to join a group of people that are new pretties as well, she meets the leader Zane who is an interesting character to say the least. He doesn’t want to be pretty and he feels guilty about something, but we don’t see what this is until almost the end sadly. As these to get closer and they get something that appears to be changing them and make them “bubbly” and remembering what their old lives used to be like. You realize that something aren’t so good, and maybe it’s because we had met David first and see how good they were together or if it’s just me being suspicious about anyone new, but I never like Zane and I never trusted him, and I still don’t.
Once Tally and Zane are “bubbly” they start getting everyone else in their group to be as well, but this doesn’t end up going so well , with one person going to extremes in order to remember how things used to be.



“Nature was tough, it could be dangerous, but unlike Dr. Cable or shay, or peris-unlike people in general-it made sense. The problems it threw at you could be solved rationally.”


Tally eventually finds a way out and gets several of their group out as well. Sadly Tally ends up getting separated from them and ends up going on a rather large adventure that shows her just what the Specials are really doing and how they create things, and mess with people’s lives just to see what humans act like in certain situations.
Along this Journey Tally learns a lot about what’s happened since the rusties world ended and how long certain other things have been going on as well. When she finally makes it back to her group and what’s left of the smokies she learns that certain things have gone terribly wrong, and that she had messed things up again. But she also learned that she was far stronger than she thought and that maybe a cure wasn’t needed after all and that maybe there were other ways to make people “bubbly.”

While I wasn't expecting that ending. It still is plausible, and one thing Dr. Cable will never be able to take away from Tally is her ability, to fight, adapt, and survive to whatever situation she is in. She is truly amazing especially considering how she acted in the first book and how she has grown up since then. I can't wait to see what happens in the next book.

“My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly”