Uglies is set in the far dystopic future  where the cities of the current world have been abandoned. In the new world, children live with their parent’s until they’re twelve, then they leave home and live in dorms. The dorms are in ugly town. Once they turn 16, they get an operation that turns them pretty. At the start of the story, Tally Youngblood is weeks away from turning 16. She is sick of seeing her “ugly” face with it’s lack of perfect symmetry, her nose that’s too long or her squinty, watery, eyes. Her best-friend-for-life,  Peris (a boy) turned 16 four months before she did, so that left her alone. Feeling friendless, she finds Shay (a girl) and they become friends. Shay tells her about people that don’t want the operation. Tally can hardly believe anyone would actually want to stay ugly for life. Blah blah blah

So basically, the story had bad pacing, underwhelming world building, unbelievable characters, boring and unbelievable conversations, and plenty of hitting over the head preaching, which frankly, marred the book’s goodness for me, not to mention the head ache it gave. I fought through the first half of the book (since I keep hearing about this series), but thankfully, it picked up in the second half. Overall though, the book was a waste of my time. I like knowing how a story ends and this one is part of series, so I couldn’t resist reading the plot summaries of the other books on wikipedia. I’m glad I won’t have to waste more time reading the other books to know how unresolved it ends.