I Just Wanna Live - Good Charlotte (Swipe Blog Tour + Flash Giveaway)

Swipe
Swipe, Book 1

Author: Evan Angler
Pages: 273
ARC Acquired from: 

Description from Goodreads:
Logan Langley is just months away from his thirteenth birthday and the biggest day of his life- the day he will finally be Marked. The Mark lets people get jobs, vote, and even go out to eat or buy concert tickets.

Becoming Marked means becoming free. Or so he is told. Five years ago when Logan's sister went to get her Mark she never came back. Now Logan can't shake the feeling he's being watched...

And then he finds the wire.

First Sentence: "The moon was the color of blood, and the clouds moving past were pale like bone."

Review:
There are a lot of dystopian elements going on in here. Like a lot. Corrupt government. Check. Revised history. Check. Creepy ways to track all citizens. Check. Mysterious deaths. Check. Religion replaced with patriotism (The Inclusion). Check. Evil adults! Check, although that's not so much dystopian as MG/YA, but whatevs. So yeah, lots of things. They do all seem to nest pretty well and believably, which is good. Sometimes authors try to make too many things happen in their books, and it ends up feeling like a forced, cluttered mess, but not so Swipe.

Swipe is getting added to the list of books that tells me to stop being all judgey judge about books based on the publisher. Like Halflings, Swipe is published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian publisher. I have nothing against Christians, but I cannot deal with inspirational fiction at all, like when every chapter starts with a Bible verse and everyone's always praying and praising the lord (Hallelujah!) every other paragraph. However, these books are reminders to me that just because a novel is published under the Christian fiction umbrella, it really doesn't have to mean that it's pushing a religious message all up in your face.

Oddly, Swipe reminded me of The Immortal Rules, despite being for completely different age groups, and mostly different dystopians. What they share, though, is the mark. In Kagawa's I believe that the registered are branded or tattooed or something, which earns them a right to food from the vampire government. In Swipe, there's a similar system. People can choose not to be marked at the age of 13, but that means you're not getting anything. Son, you're on your own. Basically, the government is saying that unless you let us track you, you'll have to become a criminal to survive, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Nice.

The only thing that really didn't jive with me was the Dust. I have trouble seeing how the government could have trouble stopping that movement. I mean, they know where a lot of them are, and it's not like the people would really care. It just seems like, so far as resistance movements go, the Dust was pretty lame, and should have been easily nipped in the bud. Perhaps, though, this will receive explication later on.

Much of the story reads like a dystopian mystery. Erin and Logan take on the role of teenage sleuths to figure out who is watching Logan, and what Erin's dad is doing in Spokie. Swipe reads somewhere between middle grade and young adult, perhaps ideally aimed at folks in their young teens. However, I found it to be a solid, fun dystopian read, and will be checking out book two, Sneak, for sure.

The publisher is offering up one copy of Swipe for one of my readers. Enter the Rafflecopter below. US only, sorry!

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: "In an age of infinite digital documentation, paper was the last safe place for secrets."

"I need an alarm system in my house
So I know when people are creepin' about"

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