Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

When I began reading this book I thought I wasn't going to finish it because it was so boring. The concept of a society based on people having to have surgery at 16 to make sure they are beautiful and all the same essentially was enough to entice me to stick it out. As I kept reading the novel became slightly more interesting, then slightly more, until it got to the point where I was engrossed in it. It's a pretty good story where Tally, an Ugly, who wants to be a Pretty and undergo the surgery at 16, finds out that your brain is altered in the process of making you pretty. Tally also experiences romance with a person named David,an Ugly who was never raised in the society where she grew up and thinks that Tally is beautiful the way she is. A rebellion against the society begins with Tally and David at the core. I would give this book geared for teens a 7 1/2 out of ten.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

This novel was about a girl (Amelia) who was thought to have killed herself and her single mother (Kate), who is trying to find out the truth about her daughter's death.

Amelia goes to a private school that prepares children to enter Ivy League schools and within this school there is a gang that Amelia gets involved in only because she is attracted to a girl named Dylan. She ends up falling in love with Dylan whose best friend (Zadie) is the gang leader and hates Amelia. Amelia's best friend Sylvia is the only real friend that Amelia seems to have outside of a person named Ben who she has never met yet confides in through texting all the time.

This novel was hard and dark. There were no beautiful moments nor joy in it. I would not be excited about reading another Kimberly McCreight novel. There is nothing grammatically wrong that stood out to me or poorly written. I just didn't enjoy it personally very much, although I did enjoy it enough to read to the end.

6/10