3.5 (barely) 
 I decided to go back to this oldie which I had never read. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld was a precursor to The Hunger Games, published before dystopian was even something commonly fund in the YA section of your bookstore. In this story Westerfeld brings us the story of Tally who has basically been brainwashed by society to believe that everyone who has not had the pretty operation is ugly. It's a fine critique of vanity and societal standards of beauty and that for me was what carried this book. Westerfeld also threw major shade at humans' tendency to be wasteful and careless with the environment. Both of these critiques made the novel for me. 
 However, it did have its problems. Westerfeld was GREAT at these things: 
 World building 
 Plot 
 Descriptive narrative of technological developements 
 Futiristic slang 
 Tally's POV 
 The things that simply did not work for me was the supporting cast of characters and for this type of book you really depend on your supporting cast to make a root-worthy army. I think Westerfeld was there for Tally, which I appreciate, but what that did was make bland the rest, and that rest was vital because love-interest David had zero personality which made it hard for me to 1- feel the love and 2-feel bad for the kid. What this also did was create an air of detachment for me, I was not invested nor submerged in the story. 
 Overall, I think this is not a bad novel, a good start to the series however I will not be continuing it. I am however going to read more Westerfeld, I want to see him work in other books and see if character development and individuality is something that was perhaps an anomaly for this book.