Pretties

This book is definitely more painful than the first. The dialogue is painful. And I get it - it's meant to highlight how airheaded the Pretties are, but I was ready to rip my speakers out as I listened to the audio of this. This book also gets more into some heavy topics like eating disorders. I think this was the last book that I read in the series when I was younger so I'm interested to read the next two.

Is this girl EVER gonna stop getting caught???

I can't. You guys. I CAN NOT. I remember liking these books so much as a kid. How is it so damn bad? I wanted to rate this higher for the sake of nostalgia but I can't. If you didn't read this as a kid, skip it now. If you did read it and think “it can't be that bad”, read it again. It can and is that bad.

The pretties have phrases they use and it's so annoying. “Tally-wa”, dizzy making, fashion missing, bogus, “Shay-la”, bubbly, “Zane-la”

Not a bad second book. Never got around to reading this in middle school when it came out due to not liking the first book in but I am glad that I finally did read it. Although some of the characters do bother me, maybe it is just because I am older and this was written for teens. Still a good book, but not really my cup of tea.

Relecture 2020 : 4/5, plus intense que le précédent avec cette plongée dans les motivations de l'opération.

Dioooooooos necesito el tercer libro YA! Es una historia superior chiva que hace recapacitar mucho sobre cosas que vivimos día a día pero una manera distinta.

Before I get into any analysis of the book I'm going to give the trigger warning I wouldn't have expected to be needed. There's a bit of content that could be very upsetting and even dangerous for people who've struggled with self-harm to read. I didn't see it coming so I'll warn you here. In the chapter titled “Ritual” Tally and another person see a group of people cutting themselves to try to get an adrenaline high. (The context of that, and who's doing it and why, will make sense as you get there.) If you want to just skip to the next chapter without reading that part, here's what happens right after that: All the people gathered to cut do so. Zane stopped breathing briefly, and Tally insisted on taking him to the hospital. All the Cutters saw them as they left. Once they got to the hospital, Zane intentionally injured his hand so they'd have something to treat.

Now. The book! It annoyed the heck out of me, but it was supposed to be kind of boring and senseless. Scott Westerfield does a great job of immersing his readers in the world of Pretties. They use idiotic slang all the time and are very empty-minded, and he really manages to explore that and make us feel that. I think he also did a good job of exploring how they could grasp a desire to escape their pretty-mindedness. It was a struggle for all the characters to break through the haze of their vane world. The author didn't make the decision easy or automatic. They had to keep fighting. So he didn't make it easy for us to read. It was frustrating to watch them “relapse”.

I think a lot of people disliked this book because he rarely gave us what we were rooting for. Junk went wrong and characters made stupid, senseless choices. It's very brave to screw up your own story. So I admire and appreciate that.

I'm glad that Tally is trying to be a better person. I mean, she fails. A LOT. But she has learned some lessons about being honest with people. She's making a lot of hard choices and trying to do the right thing. So we are seeing character growth, even though her mind has been turned Pretty and things aren't going the way we want them to.

Three stars (“liked it”) because it annoyed the heck out of me at times but it was for good reasons, and it didn't always. I won't say it's amazing writing, but it's pretty good. (Basically I want to save my four and five, which is why this gets a middling score.)

[update]
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention.
I'm really sick of the dystopian novel trope of a teenage girl resistant to some drug. Cassia Reyes in Matched fought through two pills and refused to take the third. Tris Prior in Divergent is resistant to many serums. Even Jonas in The Giver stopped talking his pills. And here we have Tally Youngblood beating the brain lesions through sheer willpower. (At least Katniss Everdeen didn't fight the effects of any drugs.) I know Matched and Divergent were written after Pretties. If anything they're all borrowing from The Giver. I'm just so tired of that shared feature in all these series -_- We can have a compelling story without any characters rejecting the control drugs or medical procedures are supposed to put on them! There can be something else that they fight! I guess I'm complaining of the unoriginality of a genre at this point.

Mieux rythmé que le premier, un revirement dès le début et une histoire qui s'enfile à toute vitesse. Vraiment bien.

Started off a little annoying with all those terms used by the Pretties. Got better when the story developed and there were quite a number of surprises which I totally did not expect. Quite impressed by some of the tech mentioned in the story, like the hoverboard and the wall that can spit out any wearables you want.

Still a fun and quick read, although I think it loses some of the charm and ability to speak to people at different ages that Uglies had. Pretty-speak drove me nuts after awhile.

(Read this and other reviews at Fictionally Inclined.)

*3.5 STARS

I truly am loving these books! However, it is difficult to review books in a series separately. A lot of what I said about Uglies still applies here. The originality of the world is perfect, and the different vocabulary choices work really well with the characters and atmosphere. Westerfeld portrayed the vapid, confused mind of a Pretty in a way that lets the reader understand it and still connect with the person while simultaneously being frustrated because they see how flawed it really is.

I enjoyed the new people we met in this book. Parts of it were a little darker than before, but the focus wasn't on that too much. Shay has never been my favorite character, and what happened to her, while sad, was not a surprise. I find Tally a unique and likable heroine, and her survival skills never cease to amaze me. As for other characters, I love Zane! He is fascinating and definitely a good addition to the cast of characters. I found Andrew intriguing, and I am hoping he shows up again in the future. I am looking forward to when that storyline gets addressed.

I loved how Westerfeld used the same basic premise of a dream to symbolize everything that was going on in the world around Tally. They were always accurate, and it was a good portrayal of how Tally subconsciously felt about and viewed circumstances without sticking everything into informative dialogue or unnecessary thought processes. As the books are written in third person, not first, too much internal monologue would be out of place. The way they are written works well with the characters and the story.

The end of the book! It left me in chills, and I can't wait to see what happens. I will definitely be reading it soon (probably after I drag myself out of bed and go get some breakfast).

A slight disappointment after Uglies, and the way they talked about food and cutting made me a tiny bit uncomfortable. But it's complicated. IDK. I still immediately started reading [b:Specials 24765 Specials (Uglies, #3) Scott Westerfeld http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255885174s/24765.jpg 3278286] so it's not like I was that disappointed.

Talk about a cliffhanger. :(

Enjoyed the developing plot with this 2nd book in the trilogy but didn't connect with the Tally/Zane romantic relationship.

After her intense rel/ship with David in the first, it felt kinda ‘wrong'.

Brilliant ending, makes me reach for Specials immediately.

Looking forward to seeing how the trilogy wraps up.

I really enjoy this series!

I really liked this – I've read the whole series before, but I started a reread and now feel compelled to finish it. Two things about the end (and therefore spoilers): 1) I really like that Tally was gonna go with Zane over David, because I get tired of the first boy in a YA book being the main character's One Twoo Love. 2) It was really unfair of Maddy to blame Tally for Zane's brain damage. Like, if the pills had to be taken together, maybe you should PUT THAT IN THE DIRECTIONS. Even a pretty could understand that.

After reading [b:Uglies 24770 Uglies (Uglies, #1) Scott Westerfeld http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255574770s/24770.jpg 2895388], I was beyond excited that there were more books in the series. I went straight to the library and picked up [b:Pretties 4137 Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165389015s/4137.jpg 1030767]. And the disappointment began there.Where it was interesting to peer into the mind of someone who had gone through the operation, I felt like I was peering into the mind of a brainless drone. Which, in a sense, I was.But it never ended. Even after she had taken the pills and continued to remain “bubbly,” I still felt like I was reading some brainless teenager's journal instead of a book that is supposed to follow up the amazing [b:Uglies 24770 Uglies (Uglies, #1) Scott Westerfeld http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255574770s/24770.jpg 2895388]. The story moves along predictably. From the beginning you know that David will return at some point, and that she'll be confused. There's no twists or surprises. Overall, I was extremely disappointed by this one and have actually given up reading the series. :(