Alfonso Zomby Zomby itibaren Hallsands, Kingsbridge TQ7 2EY, İngiltere itibaren Hallsands, Kingsbridge TQ7 2EY, İngiltere

As I entered puberty, I exited the YA section of the bookstore. I felt too grown up for what I deemed beach novels for girls with little gray matter. As an adult, I realized that I was cutting out a whole section of potentially good stories with this point of view. The problem is that as a (technically) young adult, I now know how to critique a story much better than before. Thus, from the get-go, I realized that Scott Westerfeld's second of four books in the Uglies series, Pretties, has some serious problems. The first is that Westerfeld, like most old people, cannot write natural-sounding teenage slang and dialogue for his life. The second is that the novel contains far too many recent YA genre tropes to make for a fresh story. The first problem makes itself apparent by the first chapter. I understand that slang and names would have changed in a millennium (and that passage of time was not made clear in the first book), however there should at least be an explanation of some of the slang. The nicknames, for example: why the are the endings "-la" and "-wa" tacked onto the end of certain names? Also, I understand that the characters, once changed into Pretties, are supposed to be vapid creatures. However, the word "totally" suffers an abuse in Westerfeld's novel that only rivals Stephenie Meyer's flagrant misuse of "chagrin" in the Twilight books. Unfortunately, the words "bubbly" and "bogus" suffer an alarmingly similar degree of use. The writing style is jarring to the point of unreadable. I as of this point am seriously questioning why readers were extolling these books, because if I hadn't already gotten the rest of the books in the series, I wouldn't bother continuing. The second reason I dislike this book is that the love-triangle deal I predicted would materialize in this book did so. While it's not Peris/Tally/David like I originally thought (it's Zane/Tally/David instead), its very existence irritates me. Why does a YA novel featuring a female main character always involve romance? Why is it always a love triangle (almost always two guys fighting over one girl)? If you have to include a romantic subplot, can't the protagonist know what she wants from the get-go so she can focus on the task at hand? Additionally, a large chunk of the plot really doesn't go anywhere--it's meaningless "action" sequences that could be cut out. Some parts were so boring I just skimmed over them, just like I did the "action" sequence in Twilight. Unless the writing improves in the third book, I'm going to rage.

Well, Caitlin certainly has no lack of self esteem! I lost count of the number of times she let us know how awesome she is (her fluency in Spanish and French, her amazing trips abroad, her affluent upbringing). Which made her time working retail confusing. I mean, I get the need for a steady paycheck, but if you are that awesome why is retail the answer? Anyway. It definitely brought back to mind all my experiences working retail for 6 years during high school and college. And yes, I cleaned the toilets. ;)