#71 in Dystopian
Uglies
- 432
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Best Young-Adult Novel
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Our view
The premise does most of the work here, and it is a strong one: a world where everyone is surgically made beautiful at sixteen, and a teenager who starts to question the price. It reads as a brisk adventure about friendship and growing up more than as a heavyweight warning, and some readers who come to it from the classic dystopias are disappointed. It suits younger readers meeting the genre for the first time.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Uglies is a 2005 dystopian science fiction novel by Scott Westerfeld. It is set in a futuristic post-scarcity world in which everyone is considered an "Ugly" until they are then turned "Pretty" by extreme cosmetic surgery when they reach the age of 16. It tells the story of a teenager, Tally Youngblood, who rebels against society's enforced conformity after her friends Shay and David show her the downsides to becoming a "Pretty".
Reading order · Uglies series
Full order & progress →- UgliesThis book
7.37.3 / 10 - Pretties
7.47.4 / 10 - Specials
–Not ranked yet - Extras
7.17.1 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 802 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 85% of the weight and the score stays at 7.3 — the Dystopian average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.3 | 46 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 756 | 94% |
Frequently asked
What age is Uglies for?
Uglies sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 432 pages — shorter than 54% of the ranked books in Dystopian.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Dystopian — with scores between 7.1 and 7.6, closest to this book.
