Uglies: Uglies Quartet, Book 1

This series is absolutely fabulous! Bright young minds need to learn about vanity, overuse of technology and not giving in to societal expectations in their formative years. I read this series religiously from when I was 11 and it taught me some very valuable lessons that I might not have learned otherwise. Kickass female lead who takes care of herself and takes on the issues of the world, not needing male counterparts to help her. She still craves male attention, like we all do from a very young age, but she doesn't require their help to get anything done. I found the romantic portions of the series to be appropriate, very different to the awful themes I read in the Twilight series at the same age. She fights the power and she makes personal sacrifice, all things that we have to learn to do eventually. Without this series, I would not be the happy, comfortable free-thinker that I am today. I learned to love myself and ignore the ideals of physical beauty that others tried to impose on me. This series was important in my formative years and I hope they can continue to inspire bright young minds for many years to come. I've read some reviews that suggest that underage drinking and, in the later books, "cutting" seemed like disturbing themes for young readers but as someone who has read through this series dozens of times as a teen, I found them portrayed as negatives. I could understand that it was sad that the only way they could control their brains was to cut themselves and at no point did I equate my situation to theirs and think that cutting myself would be beneficial. My brain had not been surgically damaged by the government to require that sort of action. I, like the main character in the books, had the power to think my way out of any bad situation in my life. Thank you Scott Westerfeld for contributing to the fabulous person I am today.

This book has a great backstory and gets even better in the middle and near the end i totally recommend reading this book!!!!