Book Review: Swipe by Evan Angler

Title: Swipe

Author: Evan Angler

# Of Pages: 288

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Publication Date: April 6, 2012

Level: Middle Grade

Rating: 1 Heart

Synopsis

(From Amazon.com)

Everyone gets the Mark. It gives all the benefits of citizenship. Yet if getting the Mark is such a good thing, then why does it feel so wrong?

Set in a future North America that is struggling to recover after famine and global war, Swipe follows the lives of three kids caught in the middle of a conflict they didn't even know existed. United under a charismatic leader, every citizen of the American Union is required to get the Mark on their 13th birthday in order to gain the benefits of citizenship.

The Mark is a tattoo that must be swiped by special scanners for everything from employment to transportation to shopping. It's almost Logan Langly's 13th birthday and he knows he should be excited about getting the Mark, but he hasn't been able to shake the feeling he's being watched. Not since his sister went to get her Mark five years ago . . . and never came back.

My Verdict

FINALLY! I think I started this book about 3 or 4 months ago and I’m just now finishing it. Reading this book was like pulling teeth for me. I had to force myself to read it little by little.

I always feel bad when writing a completely bad review of something, especially when I was taught that if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all. However, I agreed to review this book and give my honest opinion, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Usually, one of my favorite things about reading Dystopian is learning about this new world that the author has created. I was very disappointed in how we learned about this future world. The only way we learn about it is through Logan’s studying for his Pledge exam, or just random passages about how things were before. This seemed like a very dry way of presenting the information, almost like reading a history textbook for another world.

The character development just wasn’t there. I didn’t feel like I really knew Logan, Erin, Dane, Hailey, or any of the other characters. The main character could have been beaten over the head and about to die and I had no problem putting the book down right then. No part of me cared what happened next.

I was going to say how boring I thought the story was, but it really wasn’t that nothing was happening because it was- CONSTANTLY. I think the reason it came across as boring was that there was too much of it (I didn’t think that was possible) and it was all very anti-climatic and just kept happening. Problem arose… problem solved…. arose…. solved, and even the things that didn’t get resolved right away were very predictable, which took away the excitement.

The ending was pretty dramatic, definitely trying to hook you for the next book in the series. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the bait and will not be continuing on with the next book.