Pretties recap

Tally Youngblood is now a new pretty in New Pretty Town, beautiful and pleasantly empty-headed, and is taken into the Crims, a clique led by the restless Zane. A runaway from the Smoke breaks into a party to remind her that she hid something for herself before her operation: a letter giving her own consent, and two pills meant to cure the brain lesions the surgery leaves. She and Zane take one each, and the partial cure lets them think clearly whenever they keep themselves frightened, cold or excited. They plan an escape and lead the Crims out of the city by balloon, but the group scatters and Tally is stranded in the wild, where a young hunter from a hidden reservation village shelters her and then leaves with her. Learning that Zane was caught and that his half of the cure has damaged him, Tally goes back for him. Special Circumstances takes them both. Shay, already rebuilt as a Special, asks that Tally be given the same operation, and the book ends with Tally remade as a Special.

Previously: in a city where everyone is given beauty surgery at sixteen, Tally Youngblood befriended Shay, who ran away to the Smoke, a settlement of people who refused the operation. Special Circumstances, led by Dr. Cable, would not let Tally turn pretty unless she found the settlement and betrayed it, so she set out into the wild carrying a hidden tracker. At the Smoke she came to like the work and the people, grew close to David, who was born outside the cities, and learned from his parents Maddy and Az that the operation also leaves lesions in the brain that make people placid and easy to rule. She chose to stay and threw the tracker into a fire, which is what switched it on. Special Circumstances destroyed the settlement, killed Az and took the others. Tally and David freed most of them, but Shay had already been made pretty. Maddy had a two-pill cure that had never been tested and would not use anyone unable to consent, so Tally confessed her betrayal, signed a permission for herself, and walked back into the city to be made pretty so the cure could be tried on her.

Months after her operation, Tally is a new pretty in New Pretty Town: beautiful, content and unable to hold on to a serious thought for long. She is admitted to the Crims, the clique of former uglies led by Zane, who alone seems to be fighting the fog everyone lives in. During her induction party an uninvited ugly gets into the mansion. It is Croy, a survivor of the Smoke, who tells Tally that she left something hidden for herself before the surgery and gives her enough to find it before he is chased off.

Tally and Zane track down what she hid: a sealed package holding a letter she wrote to herself as an ugly, giving her own permission for what follows, and two pills meant to cure the brain damage the operation causes. Rather than leave one of them foggy, they split the dose and take one pill each. The effect is real but partial. Both begin to think clearly for the first time since their surgeries, and they find that cold, fear and excitement sustain the clarity, which they call being bubbly. They also realize that behaving too clearly in public will be noticed.

Keeping themselves deliberately shocked and short of sleep, Tally and Zane hold on to their clarity and begin to plan. Tally remembers the Smoke, David and Maddy, and understands what her own letter was asking her to do. They decide to leave the city and reach the people who made the cure, taking as many of the Crims with them as will come, while performing exactly the empty-headedness everyone expects of them in public. Zane, meanwhile, starts suffering headaches that he plays down, and Shay's hostility toward Tally sharpens.

The escape is set for the night of a large city celebration. The Crims gather supplies and equipment in secret, and Tally realizes that Special Circumstances has been watching her far more closely than she thought, and may even intend her to lead them somewhere. When the night comes, the group breaks out of New Pretty Town, using a hot-air balloon and hoverboards to cross the greenbelt while wardens and Specials give chase. The escape does not hold together: the group is scattered, and Tally is separated from Zane and comes down alone in the wild.

Alone, injured and without supplies, Tally survives in the wilderness until she is found by people from a village with no technology at all. Their young hunter, Andrew Simpson Smith, takes her for a god from the sky and shelters her. Tally works out what the village really is: a reservation, maintained and studied by the cities, whose people have been kept ignorant on purpose and whose beliefs have been arranged for them. She tells Andrew the truth about the world beyond his valley, and he leaves with her.

Travelling with Andrew, Tally pieces together what happened after the escape. Some of the Crims got through toward the people who made the cure; Zane and others were caught and taken back to the city. She also learns that Zane's half of the cure has done him real harm, because the two pills were designed to work together and the one he swallowed was never meant to act alone. Rather than continue to safety, Tally turns back toward the city.

Back inside the city, Tally reaches the Crims who remain and finds Zane damaged: shaking, exhausted and watched constantly, but still clear-headed enough to want out. She also finds that Shay has vanished from New Pretty Town and returned as something new. Shay has been recruited into Special Circumstances and rebuilt as a Special, faster, stronger and colder than any pretty, and she has been hunting Tally.

Tally's attempt to get Zane out of the city fails. Special Circumstances takes them both, and Dr. Cable shows how little of the escape was ever beyond her reach. Zane, whose brain has been injured by taking half a cure, is left in the city as a damaged pretty. Shay, now a Special, asks that Tally be given the same operation she has had, and Dr. Cable agrees. Tally is rebuilt: her body strengthened, her senses sharpened and her mind made cold and clear. The book ends with Tally awake and remade, no longer pretty, no longer bubbly, and belonging to Special Circumstances.

Tally's attempt to get Zane out of the city fails. Special Circumstances takes them both, and Dr. Cable makes clear how little of the escape was ever outside her control. Zane's condition is the price of splitting the cure: the two pills were designed to work as a pair, and the one he swallowed has injured his brain, leaving him shaky and fragile although still clear-minded. He stays behind in the city as a damaged pretty. Shay, who disappeared from New Pretty Town earlier in the book, has been recruited into Special Circumstances and rebuilt as a Special, physically formidable and emotionally cold, and it is Shay who asks that Tally be given the same operation. Dr. Cable agrees. Tally is operated on again and wakes with a Special's body and a Special's mind: strong, fast, contemptuous of ordinary pretties, and entirely certain that she belongs where she now is. The people carrying the cure are still at large in the wild, Zane is left behind in the city, and Tally, reshaped for the third time, begins the next book working for the organization she once set out to destroy.