Customer Reviews
Thought-provoking, well paced and exciting - By: tybalt-quin, 12 Apr 2008 
Set a couple of months after UGLIES, Tallly is now pretty & anxious to discover whether she's been voted into the Crims (a group of pretties known for playing tricks). Tallly's best friends with Shay, but is drawn to the leader of the Crims, Zane, & is disturbed by vague memories she has of her time in the Smoke. When her former friend from the Smoke, Croy crashes a pretty party to give her a message, she begins to question being a pretty & forms a connection with Zane, who's discovered that his thinking becomes clearer when he stops eating food in Pretty Town & pursues new sensations. Together, they act on Croy's message, the repercussions of which have a drastic impact on the Crims & Tallly's friendship with Shay & brings them to the attention of the terrifying Specials.
Westerfeld maintains the excellent pace of UGLIES & weaves in more details of pretty society, notably the social cliques that the pretties form to reflect their particular interests. Westerfeld expands on the mind-control elements of being made pretty in a thoughtful way & the scenes where Tallly & Zane counter this by trying to be 'bubbly' alll the time are well portrayed (although I have concerns about the scenes where they stop eating food, because there's a potential for some readers to misinterpret the purpose). There's a chilling contrast between Tallly & Zane's attempts to stay 'bubbly' & Shay's solution. My only quibble is that I wanted to see more of what happens to Shay & Tallly when Shay's memories return as it would have helped flesh out some of Shay's anger & jealousy & provided more of a backdrop to her self-destructive behaviour.
David returns towards the end of the book, although the scenes are brief, as were the scenes set in the New Smoke, which I'd have liked to see expanded to provide an idea of what was happening with the Smokies whilst Tallly was pretty. The love triangle between David, Tallly & Zane was also too cursorily handled to make much impact & I hope that this will be explored more in Specials.
The end of the book is chilling & provides a good set up for the next book SPECIALS. At the same time, PRETTIES works as a complete story within its own right, although you do need to read UGLIES first to get the most out of it.
Ever wanted to be perfect? - By: Starybabe, 16 Aug 2006 
This is the second book in the 'uglies' trilogy, I read this book before reading the first book & so it took me a while to get used to the unique language that the characters use, however it is a fantastic, well written book. I couldn't put it down, definitely worth a read but reading uglies first would probably help
