Enchanting Review: Pretties

Pretties

Scott Westerfeld

Young Adult Paranormal

Simon Pulse

ISBN# 978-0-689-86539-8

370 pages

$ 7.99

Print - Available now

Rating: 4 Enchantments

Zane is a Pretty. However he has always been different than the stereotypical Pretty. He does not share the same attitude as them. He is more serious than the Pretties who all seem to share the same “blonde” mindset. Zane is also the leader of the clique known as the Crims. The Crims are pretties who act like the uglies. They play tricks and get into trouble. These are things that are unheard of in the Pretties community. The Crims goal is to stay bubbly. Bubbly is where they stay on almost an adrenaline rush.

Tally Youngblood is a Pretty. Tally has given herself up to the Specials so that she could get the antidote that will cure the lesions in the brains of the Pretties. Tally is introduced to the Crims and later on becomes the female leader of them. Zane and Tally work side by side to stay bubbly and get the antidote.

The story of the Pretties is about Tally and Zane defeating the Specials and helping the new smoke rise. Fighting alongside Tally and Zane are most of the Crims, the new smokies and some uglies. Zane and Tally get the antidote. It is two pills, and they each take one. Tally is cured, Zane is also but he has horrible headaches as a side effect. Shay, one of Tally’s friends, becomes obsessed with Tally and finds that cutting yourself will also make you bubbly. She gets a lot of followers to start cutting themselves as well. The Crims try to escape from new Pretty Town to get to the New Smokies headquarters. This is not an easy task because the Specials are keeping the new Pretties in, and they are monitoring Tallies every move. While escaping everyone gets separated from each other and Tally gets lost without any gear to help her survival. When she gets to new smoke the doctors tell her that she was never cured by the antidote, she had cured herself somehow. And that Zane had nanobytes eating his brain the pill that she took was supposed to cure that. Zane has now lost his motor skills. The specials arrive because they had a tracking devise in his tooth. Tally refuses to leave Zane so the specials forcibly make her a special.

The Pretties kept me up all night reading. I had to work the next day on only an hour of sleep because I could simply not put it down! The book was different than the normal books I like. Futuristic but no aliens or overly science fiction. They talk about us the rusties which I thought was cool. I like how it opened my eyes on how we are destroying the planet, because the rusties almost kill everyone and the earth. The one thing that the book was missing was romance. There was a definite chemistry between Zane and Tally but I wish it would have been more elaborated on. Zane and Tally are going steady but they never get too mushy. They say I love you which are a big deal in the story. I like this because it seems that every relationship that teenagers have means that they are in love, but I wanted nice mushy romance. The other thing that was missing was all the definitions of future technology. It took me awhile to figure out what bubbly was even. I really like the way the book ended. Tally became what she was fighting so hard against, and it leaves you craving the next book.

Scott Westerfeld has written three other young adult series. To find out more about him and his books please visit www.scottwesterfeld.com

Krissy

ENCHANTING REVIEWS

July 2008