Uglies

Tally Youngblood lives in Uglyville, a dormitory town for teenagers in a city set centuries in the future. On their sixteenth birthday everyone receives an operation that gives them the same flawless skin, wide eyes and perfectly balanced features, and then they cross the river to New Pretty Town, where life is one long party. Tally's best friend has already gone, and she counts the days until she can follow.

While she waits she meets Shay, a girl who loves hoverboarding and pranks but does not want to be pretty at all. Shay talks about the Smoke, a camp of runaways living in the wild, and one day she leaves to find it. When Tally's own operation day arrives, she is taken instead to Special Circumstances, where the chilling Dr. Cable makes her an offer: follow Shay's cryptic directions, locate the Smoke and give it away, or never become pretty. Out in the wilderness, past the ruins of an old city, Tally meets David, a boy born outside the walls, and starts to see the operation very differently.

Quick, cinematic and full of gadgets, with a thoughtful idea about beauty under the action. About 448 pages, and the first book of a series that continues with Pretties and Specials.