Pretties is the sequel to the amazing book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld and I wasn't too sure if I wanted to read this book or not but I decided to give it a go anyways because if you're going to start a series, you may as well carry on from where you left off - doomed words that will haunt me, I fear.
*This will have spoilers from Uglies and Pretties in it so stop here if you haven't read the first book*
Tally has now given herself up and has officially had the operation to make herself a 'Pretty' a perfect specimen of a human being - she is good looking, popular and is having the time of her life in this high-tech drunken world that she has been thrust into. The only thing tugging at the back of her mind is the real reason she came to New Pretty Town in the first place - to test the cure, and now she is in a struggle to release the grips of this pretty world from herself and to find out the horrible truths about everything around her.
In New Pretty Town they had a language or a slang that they used amongst each other that wasn't used in the first book at all, words like 'dizzy-making', 'bubbly' and 'bogus' were used constantly throughout this book without a proper introduction into the lingo. I felt as though I was thrown into the deep end of this book with this and was just expected to know exactly what everything was and what everything meant which I most certainly did not. Due to this, I found myself not really understanding half of what was going on until I'd read about three quarters of the book and that was when things started to get a little bit more interesting.
Tally was part of a clique who called themselves the Crims - this was made up of people who were trouble makers, or 'tricky', in their ugly life - they would go around trying to do the most rebellious things that were possible to do to impress one another and it seemed a little pathetic for my likings. It just seemed as though they were trying to fit in, and when it came to light about three quarters of the way in that the reason that they were set up in the first place was so they could escape and find a cure came as a big surprise as it seemed totally out of character for them and was slightly random. It was as if Westerfeld thought things were getting a little too boring so added something to liven it up a little, but it didn't really have the intended effect in my eyes, it just made me think it wasn't really thought out and if this was made clear near the beginning, everything would have made a whole lot more sense than it did.
The characters were bland as well - each individual person seemed to blend into another one and other than Tally, Zane, Shay and Peris (who barely made it into the book) I couldn't really name anyone else. There was no real development, and if there was it was only to make them more pathetic and boring. I didn't like Tally and Zane's relationship one bit, there was no growth, no emotion, no realistic qualities, it was as if two actors were set to act a romance scene in a play but didn't connect and have chemistry at all - it just read like a bad screen play. One minute they're silent, the next they're in love with eachother, it just doesn't make any sense.
There was something about this book that I just didn't like but for once I just can't put my finger on it, it definitely wasn't as good as the first book and now I'm not even sure I will read the third instalment. I was thoroughly disappointed with this book.
★★
