Rating: 4.5 stars
Synopsis: Beauty guaranteed, but at what price? Tally can't wait to turn sixteen. Only then will she be able to have an operation to turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and live in New Pretty Town, the high-tech paradise, where her only job will be to have fun. But when Tally finally becomes pretty, everything isn't as perfect as it seems. Underneath all the beauty and luxury is a nagging sense that something is wrong. Very wrong. Searching for the truth, Tally discovers a whole new side of the pretty world - and it isn't very pretty. Now Tally has a choice to make: fight and forget what she knows, or fight for her life.
Review: This is one of the books that I got for Christmas in 2015 (I got so many that I've still got about four left to read!) and is a bind up of the first two books in Scott Westerfield's series. I really enjoyed this book. It's a completely different take on Young Adult dystopia and deals with an issue that is still prominent in today's society. Being 'pretty' and having to look a certain way and do certain things to be popular will always be issues in society because of the many different types of media that we're all exposed to on a daily basis and is a big issue today because of it. I really liked how Scott dealt with this issue in this book, showing how looking the right way can take over your life and become all you think about.
I thought the world was really interesting. Bridges that 'talk' and hoverboards as a mode of transport are all things that I can see becoming a part of our future. I think what was even more interesting was that the world wasn't falling apart. We're not living in an outright totalitarian government like in the Hunger Games and we're not living in the remains of what used to be Chicago like in Divergent. The differences between New Pretty Town and everywhere else are apparent but it was a nice change from most of the YA dystopian books that are popular. I also liked how the world was flawed. Not all the bridges 'talk' and there are ways around the ones that do and hoverboards don't always work. These little flaws added to the plot and kept me engaged from beginning to end.
I loved the idea of the 'lesions'. Being pretty in this world doesn't just change your appearance, it changes how you think as well and again, this mimics real life. Thinking you have to look a certain way can take over your life and changes how you think about things. I thought this was a really good way of explaining this and showing people what happens when you have the chance to be part of the popular crowd.
I really liked the Smoke, I just would have liked to have spent more time there. There's a whole community living out in the wilderness that I wanted to get to know better. We really don't spend much time there in the first two books and I really want to know more about the camp and the people there, though I suppose that will come the further into the series you get. I enjoyed reading about Tally's journey to the Smoke in the first book. Shay's directions were so obscure and neither the reader or Tally knows what's beyond the limits of the town that it was a guessing game for everyone as to where the story was going to go.
The only thing I didn't really like in this was the romance. It just seemed really half-hearted and lack luster and, by the end of reading both books, I'm not invested in David and Tally's relationship. I think this is because David is still such a mystery to us; we don't really know much about him and the romance seemed to happen so fast that the book ended with me not invested in the relationship and not really caring about it.
Other than that, this series is a really nice, fresh approach on a YA dystopia and I would recommend to anyone who likes a good dystopian novel.
Image from amazon.co.uk - no Copyright Intended
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