It’s two hundred years in the future, and after a number of man made calamities, people have found the way to keep the peace is the operation to make people Pretty. At age 16, the operation makes everyone beautiful, and improves everyone’s health. What they don’t know is that at the same time, their brains are altered to keep them dumb and pliable.
Tally learned all this in the last book (Uglies), but by the end, realized the only way she could save her friends was to become Pretty herself, so that’s where we find her as this book begins. But Tally’s different. Even though her memories have mostly been taken away from her, she still knows that something’s not right, and that leads her to join the Crims, a group of Pretties that are also searching for something more.
The arrival of some of the Uglies from outside the city provides a sudden cure, but that cure leads to complications that Tally couldn’t imagine, and puts her chances of escape from the city in doubt.
I liked the first book of the trilogy better. It’s not that this one is bad, but it’s didn’t grip me quite as well as Uglies did. I do have the next book (Specials) in the house, so I’ll be reading that one soon so I can see exactly how this ends. I’m hoping the action picks back up in that one.