Tally's best friend becomes pretty several months before she is due to and she feels lost without him. After sneaking into New Pretty Town to see him she bumps into fellow ugly Shay. Turns out they have the same birthday and while Tally is looking forward to having a friend to turn pretty with, Shay is planning to run away.The idea of a utopia created by erasing individuality is nothing new, but Westerfeld has managed a new and spectacularly shallow twist on it, which brings something fresh to play. Equally most of the plot is fairly predictable, but it's well executed and the characters are easy to care for. Scott's delivery is what makes this novel stand out. Clearly there is a point being made here but he avoids preaching to us and provides a good fun adventure which isn't overwhelmed by angst and misery (yay). The romance is relatively simple and hooray for a heroine who doesn't have three billion people in love with her by the end of chapter one, is actually perfectly capable and learns quickly to avoid the "too stupid to live" mistakes that so often plague a YA heroine.
Not sure I can offer the unreserved raving about the brilliance of this book that other have, but I very much enjoyed it and it's a solid delivery.
2 comments:
I tried to read this book, but couldn't get through it all. Once she got to the part with the helicopter. I beg to differ about the too stupid to live aspect. However, now that I think on it, it could have been the fact that Westerfield put in every tedious aspect of Tally's journey.
Isabel - hahaha certainly didn't live up to the hype for me but I quite liked Tally and Shay (shay more really) and enjoyed as a quick read. I think kids will realy enjoy it and the journey wasn't nearlyh as dull as bits of the later harry potter books, (in tent in a field bitching at each other yawn).
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