A Terminal Case of the Uglies

Bone Chillers #14

by David Bergantino

Eric Ross, the least attractive kid in school, is too ugly to be included in the photograph that a famous talent agent takes of all his classmates, who contract a disfiguring disease after the picture is taken

Genres: Horror

100 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Austin Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75⭐ rounded up.

Had the potential to be pretty good, but is squandered by a padded, meandering middle act and bland writing. The last 20 pages were pretty great, though.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright ! My second ever Bone Chillers book. I absolutely had to read this one .Look at that title. A Terminal Case Of The Uglies begins with our protagonist Eric, nicknamed against his will as Ear .His initials spell out ear. Eric is looking at this flyer called Skerry Pictures .It's apparently a talent agency that promises one kid a chance of becoming famous. Eric has a problem though Eric has big ears and alot of other things that make him a little self conscious about the way he looks ,so he assumes he has no chance of winning, but his friend Nicole, a tomboy girl he hangs out with tries talking him into going to the audition .Well Eric's nickname and his looks is a constant target of two school bullies named Jimmy and Leo .They're bullying him one day but is stopped by this weird guy named Wendell that works for this agency .He seems to really want Eric to audition as well as his friend, but the Saturday of auditions he is denied by Mr Skerry a guy complete opposite of Wendell .After Nicole gets her picture taken, the next day he notices alot of kids have not appeared in school and the ones that did show up all have rashes around there necks and they have a very pale conplextion. While on his way home he gets an offer though. He runs into Wendell again and he offers him a job, helping around the office and whatnot.
While working there he goes into a room that Wendell was told from Mr.Skerry nobody is allowed to enter and he stumbles upon something. This leads to Eric suspecting Wendell and Mr.Skerry having something to do with the kids and alot of tension between him and Nicole. A Terminal Case Of The Uglies is a pretty fun book. It was a tad predictable but I've read alot of these type of books, so that's a given .With that being said. I still enjoyed the atmosphere of the office and wanted to learn more about what was going on. Plus there's a really funny scene in this book where Eric is trying to tell his mom about what is going on but she says she has to go to a parents paying attention to their kids meeting or something and it was pretty good. The only negatives I had for this book was I wish we learned exactly what Wendell and Mr skerry actually were .We get why all of the things are happening but not what they are. Are they aliens ?monsters? Vampires ? We don't know. The other negative I had was there is a scene at the end involving the camera and Eric turns into something that I didn't get. Other then that, the book was fine. I give A Terminal Case Of The Uglies a four out of five stars.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone reminded me of this series the other day, but I was only able to get this one from my library. I'd never read it before, but it was still vaguely nostalgic in that 90's "kid horror" kind of way.

This obviously wasn't very good, but I still had a lot of fun reading it. Also, my cover had an advertisement for the "new TV show" based on this series and all I have to ask is - how did I miss this being a TV show when I was a kid?!?