2008-04-12 Thought-provoking, well paced and exciting

Set a couple of months after UGLIES, Tally is now pretty and anxious to discover whether she's been voted into the Crims (a group of pretties known for playing tricks). Tally's best friends with Shay, but is drawn to the leader of the Crims, Zane, and 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 and forms a connection with Zane, who's discovered that his thinking becomes clearer when he stops eating food in Pretty Town and pursues new sensations. Together, they act on Croy's message, the repercussions of which have a drastic impact on the Crims and Tally's friendship with Shay and brings them to the attention of the terrifying Specials.

Westerfeld maintains the excellent pace of UGLIES and 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 and the scenes where Tally and Zane counter this by trying to be 'bubbly' all 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 Tally and Zane's attempts to stay 'bubbly' and Shay's solution. My only quibble is that I wanted to see more of what happens to Shay and Tally when Shay's memories return as it would have helped flesh out some of Shay's anger and jealousy and 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 Tally was pretty. The love triangle between David, Tally and Zane was also too cursorily handled to make much impact and I hope that this will be explored more in Specials.

The end of the book is chilling and 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.