I don't know what to say. Starting out, the book was awful. The complaining on every other page about how ugly everyone was naturally got on my nerves, along with the constant social commentary on how horrible life is now, present-day. The book seemed pretty pretentious at times, going on about how stupid the Rusties (aka us present-day as opposed to the society set hundreds of years later in the book) were and how ugly everyone was, and stupid that they were content with this or trying something even stupider to "fix" themselves, like getting "not-eating diseases." I'm not that sensitive a person, but the book was so constant about it I almost wanted to catch a "not-eating disease" just to make it shut up. 
 Along with the irritatingly low opinion of its audience the book seemed to give off by these negative points it constantly spewed, it also seemed to be written for a ten-year old. It used no vocabulary a second grader couldn't decipher, and it was extremely pridictable to the point where I could call out without fail what kind of impact a certain detail was going to have on the characters and plot. And yeah, being right all the time is aggrivating. I mean, it'd be fine if the book was targeted towards girls aged ten to twelve. But the more mature themes and the constant commentary that the reader is stupid and ugly says otherwise. 
 Towards the end, though, the book got a smidge better. It was still predictable, but held off a tiny bit on the whole "everyone, especially people living in the time of the reader, is ugly" part. You were still kind of stupid, but not having your hideous appearance surgically perfected wasn't that big of an issue anymore. Now instead you have to deal with the afteraffects of the main character's blind stupidity, which naturally ruins everything good. 
 I'm not a negative person. I'm not. I don't like writing bad reviews. But when something really makes me mad, well, this review's a fine example. I think part of the problem was that I was so looking forward to this book because of the interesting concept, but everything else took away from it. I do like the way the society was and the different inventions--the setting and its components were great, just as I had hoped it would be. Sadly, the narration fell way below my expectations. However, I am going to give the series another shot and read the next one. Uglies isn't really a *bad* book, just not written in a very great way, in my opinion. It is worth a shot, though.