Tally Youngblood is a young girl who lives in a futuristic world where everyone is given a surgery at the age of sixteen in order to make them pretty. In a previous novel in the series, Tally loses her right to become pretty when she refuses to turn on a friend who has run away to a place called the Smoke, a place where uglies go to remain ugly. Tally went to the Smoke and fell in love with a boy who grew up there, deciding not to turn in the people in the Smoke. However, when Tally tries to destroy the tracker she was given to signal Special Circumstances, it causes the tracker to go off anyway. Everyone is imprisoned except for Tally and her boyfriend, David. However, Tally and David are able to successfully rescue a few of the Smoke members before they are turned pretty. David's mother, Maddy, has found a cure for brain lesions she believes are given to everyone during the pretty surgery and, as a way to repair the damage she has done, Tally agrees to be turned pretty so they can test the cure on her.
