Uglies by Scott Westerfield is dystopia science fiction and romance. It takes place after we’ve destroyed ourselves in the future, and they rebuild society. The main character’s name is Tally. She is almost 16. Her best friend has already turned 16. When you turn 16 in this reality, you get an operation that makes you pretty. If you’re younger than 16, you’re considered ugly. The people they’re called ugly, ugly, live across the river, in dorms. When they turn 16, they get to move across the river to a new pretty town party all day and all night.
Throughout the book, the concept of beauty is completely warped by the world they live in because nothing is beautiful unless it’s pretty. So, people in society have never seen them average past age 16. They don’t even let them develop into a person before they start manipulating their whole face and body. Stay with me if you want to read books like Uglies.
7 Books Like Uglies
Uglies series represents our reality with fictional characters and fantasy backgrounds. We saw how women were treated and how they felt. This book teaches us many lessons and helps us realize a girl’s feelings and situation. Are you waiting to read more books similar to Uglies? I will review 7 dystopian romance books for you. Let’s begin!
1. Only Ever Yours
This is a modern retelling of Atwood’s story. It’s a YA book but with strong crossover appeal. Louise O’Neill writes both for young adults and for older adults. So this one is set in a world where baby girls are no longer born naturally but instead bred in schools. They trained their whole life in the art of pleasing men. When they graduate, the highest-rated can become companions, who can live at home and be wives and mothers until they’re no longer useful.
The ones left behind will either become concubines or teachers so that you can see The Handmaid’s Tale resemblance there. This book follows two of the students, Freida and Isabel, and what happens when they try to resist their forced system. So it’s hard to read, very dark, but it is powerful, like Uglies.
Author: Louise O’Neill
Average Customer Review: (3.9 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Physical & Emotional Abuse, Feminist Theory
Number Of Pages: 400
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
2. Vox
Women are only allowed to speak 100 words every day. So they wear these bracelets and receive strong electric shocks if they go over their world limit. For me, some of the most powerful scenes were watching our main character Jean. She used to be a well-respected scientist before this rule was implemented to raise her children. So she has a young daughter and trying to teach her daughter to value herself in this world where her silence is seen as the most important thing.
Jean also has a son, slightly older, who this society has conditioned that he’s grown up in. So he is constantly arguing with his mother about her value as a woman. Those scenes were the most chilling for me to read. This dystopia is so close to our real world, terrifying, similar to Uglies.
Author: Christina Dalcher
Average Customer Review: (4.2 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Censorship & Politics, Political Thrillers
Number Of Pages: 352
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
3. The Farm
The Farm is an organization that provides surrogate mothers for mega-rich clients. The surrogates are called Hosts, and they are very well-cared for at the Farm, as long as they deliver healthy babies. We hear from a few different points of view, the main one being Jane. She is one of the Hosts, and Mae is the owner of this organization.
It’s powerful having both points of view and scary because from Mae’s point of view. We can see quite how easily hyper-capitalism is for people to become commodities. The violations of basic human rights that people are willing to turn a blind eye to in exchange for money. From Jane’s point of view, we see her becoming increasingly trapped and helpless within this system. We saw this plot and the character’s situations in Uglies, and we can relate to it.
Author: Joanne Ramos
Average Customer Review: (4.0 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Family Life Fiction
Number Of Pages: 327
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
4. Salt Slow
It is a collection of nine short stories. All about female bodies and female appetites, sexuality, and all with a big dose of magical realism to make it all extra weird. So where the stories I’ve talked about so far might make you feel scared for women. Like Uglies, these stories might make you feel scared of women and girls.
Especially, one of the stories is about a girl band, who it’s hinted might not be fully human. Also, their music’s violent mania seems to inspire mainly teenage girls who listen to it. So the story is about a post-apocalyptic future in which the world has flooded, and a couple is afloat above the ruins of their lost world and preparing for the woman to give birth to this new reality.
Author: Julia Armfield
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Anthologies & Short Stories
Number Of Pages: 208
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
5. The Godless Boys
It’s an alternate history instead of a dystopian future. So this imagines that after the war, the Church took control of England, and non-believers were deported to this remote island off the coast of the north of England. Fast forward to the 1980s, and now a group of boys who grew up there terrorize the island, searching for the religious spies they are convinced is among them.
One day, a girl shows up on the island, hidden away in the boat from the mainland that brings them food and supplies. One of the boys from this gang falls in love with her, which kickstarts a violent reaction across the island. The romance and background match with Uglies.
Author: Naomi Wood
Average Customer Review: (3.9 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Dystopian Fiction
Number Of Pages: 356
Available: Paperback
6. Station Eleven
The story is about a flu virus that wipes out most of the population. Also, the book jumps between the before and the after of this virus, the after being about twenty years into the future. There’s a large cast of characters in this book, one of which is Kirsten. She was a child when the virus first struck and is now a traveling performer with The Symphony, who performs Shakespeare’s plays.
The Symphony comes across a dangerous prophet on their journey, and various group members disappear. So it’s a scary, sinister, page-turning story, but also a beautiful look at how interconnected humans are, and also a fight for the importance of art, even in this post-apocalyptic landscape. Kirsten is brave as Tierney that we already know in the Uglies series.
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Number Of Pages: 352
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
7. The Natural Way of Things
This one is feminist horror. Ten women wake up from a drugged sleep to find themselves in a compound in the middle of the Australian outback. They’ve got no phones, no computers, and a 30-foot electric fence surrounds them. None of the women know why they’re there, but as they talk to each other, they slowly discover they all have one thing in common. They all have been involved in sex scandals with powerful men.
We never hear the full stories, but that works well because we realize we have already heard these stories from the few little words. But where the book takes a dark turn when a scheduled food delivery fails to show up. So the women realize that they have been forgotten there. The science elements with a horror background are exciting that will take your attention to read. If you are a big fan of Uglies, you must try it.
Author: Charlotte Wood
Average Customer Review: (3.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Psychological Literary Fiction, Australia & Oceania Literature
Number Of Pages: 208
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
Read More Similar Books: 5 Dystopian Feminism Books Like The Grace Year
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