Uglies: Shay’s Story by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson

book cover of Uglies: Shay's Story by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Uglies: Shay’s Story
Author: Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson
Illustrator: Steven Cummings
Release date: February 28, 2012
Publisher: Del Rey
Pages: 160
Source: Publisher

“Uglies “told Tally Youngblood’s version of life in Uglyville and the budding rebellion against the Specials. Now comes an exciting graphic novel revealing “new “adventures in the Uglies world–as seen through the eyes of Shay, Tally’s rebellious best friend who’s not afraid to break the rules, no matter the cost.

A few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, Shay eagerly awaits her turn to become a Pretty–a rite-of-passage operation called “the Surge” that transforms ordinary Uglies into paragons of beauty. Yet after befriending the Crims, a group of fellow teens who refuse to take anything in society at face value, Shay starts to question the whole concept. And as the Crims explore beyond the monitored borders of Uglyville into the forbidden, ungoverned wild, Shay must choose between the perks of being Pretty and the rewards of being real.

The Uglies series was one of the first YA series I read and I loved every bit of it.  I don’t normally read graphic novels but I made an exception for this one and I am so glad I did.  Shay’s Story is awesome!  You don’t want to miss out on Shay’s backstory.

Shay is a very important character in Uglies but her story is never told.  It’s never made known why she went to the Smoke, what she was like as an ugly, or what guy she had a crush on.  All those questions are answered in Shay’s Story and boy are they some shockers.  It turns out Shay played a bigger role than anyone thought.

The story itself was great. A lot of the secrets were revealed and Shay turned out to be a cooler person than she was made out to be in Uglies.  Her history with Tally was explained as well as her history with some other well known characters in the series. Fans of the original series will be shocked by some of the secrets revealed in this book.

The illustrations really were awesome.  It was nice to finally put faces to some of the Uglies characters.  The story is short and contains very few words but the story really is told through the illustrations.  The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” definitely applies in this case.

Overall, Shay’s Story is a must-read for fans of the Uglies series.  Give this one a shot even if you aren’t a fan of graphic novels.  It’s worth it!

Looking for more reviews of Uglies: Shay’s Story?
I Reads You’s Review
Comicsgirl’s Review

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6 comments

  1. Whoa, I had no idea about this! I’m not too experienced with graphic novels, but like you, I loved Uglies when it came out. It’ll be interesting to see what this story is like! 🙂

  2. I’ve heard about this for a while now; I’m curious! I really liked the first novel, but wasn’t crazy about the second. This is one I might have to get for my Media Center 🙂

  3. I’m not a big fan of graphic novels, I like to put the face I imagined to the character, but I’m curious about Shay’s story, in the book I didn’t like her that much, but your review is really interesting, so probably I will read this, I really loved the hole series, so probably I’ll love this book too 🙂

  4. Heard nothing but wonderful things about this author!

    It seems like a very poignant commentary on beauty ideals.

    Love that the characters are easy to connect to.

    Lovely review 🙂