Pretties

Tally is in New Pretty Town. She's due to go to a party. She remembers being in the Smoke, but her full attention is on being a Pretty now.

She goes to a party and thinks she sees a Special, a sort of security force. It turns out the person is Croy, someone she knew before, but her memories are somewhat muddled.

She is chased by the Specials but escapes. She becomes attracted to somebody named Zane who tries to get her to remember things that happened to her when she was an ugly, along with specific people from that time. They take pills which are able to counteract the brainwashing they have undergone and they begin to make plans to escape. They know they are under constant surveillance, though.

From there on things go downhill rapidly. Zane is having horrible headaches, but Tally and he are still planning to leave the city. They do manage that, but in doing that Tally discovers that her past is going to come back and haunt her in a big way. She finds a whole new group of people outside the city, and she makes a new friend, but she finds out old grudges can still carry on, and her world implodes around her.

An excellent second book in the series. An argument is made that having everyone under control is actually necessary, that people left to their own devices will ruin the world as the Rusties did previously, and that everything that Special Circumstances has been doing has been for the good of the people in the town.

It's an interesting argument and not one without merit, either, at least in the world where these events are taking place.

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