With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

Becoming pretty doesn't just change the way you look," she said. "No," David said. "It changes the way you think.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.

I kissed him once," she whispered. "Well done. What did he do?" "Um..." Deryn sighed. "He woke up.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.