Extras, Scott Westerfeld

There was always plenty to see at tech-head parties, crazy people and kick new gadgets. Maybe people weren't as beautiful as back during the Prettytime, but parties were a lot more interesting: serious surge-monkeys with snake fingers and medusa hair: smart-matter clothes that rippled like flags in a breeze; safety fireworks skittering along the floor, dodging feet and sizzling incense as they passed.

Imagine a world where your status, salary and reason for being depended on how many people were visiting your blog. Yeah, not that hard, is it? Well, this is the world in which Aya lives. It's a few years after the events of the Uglies trilogy, and we're in Tokyo. Aya is a nobody, an extra, and her face rank is a measly 451 369. She desperately needs to kick a good story if she's ever going to be as popular as her brother. But what starts as a story about a secret hoverboard clique turns out to be something that's bigger than anything Aya could have imagined.

You don't have to have read the Uglies trilogy to read Extras.

Extras is longlisted for the Silver Inky.