Birthmarked

Ah, welcome to a new year, filled with new books. My life, as always, is full of reading, and I am reading a nearly obscene number of books right now, because of school and my own silliness. I am reading Twelfth Night (again, for school), Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, It's Kind of a Funny Story, and Bless Me, Ultima. Yes, I am reading 5 things at once, but I'll finish them all soon and be ready to read new stuff. But onto my review of the day. Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien.
Birthmarked is a dystopian story (I know, it seems like I read nothing else!) about a girl named Gaia Stone. Scarred at birth, she lives outside the wall of the Enclave with her mother and father. Gaia and her mother are midwives who "advance" the first 3 children born outside the wall each month to the Enclave, where they will grow up with adopted families. This was the world Gaia trusted, until her mother and father are taken captive by the Enclave. Inside the wall, desperate to save her parents, Gaia is faced with the truth of the Enclave, and something bad brewing from the advanced babies.

Birthmarked was a very cool dystopian story, one that is originally seen as something that may have taken place in the past. A place of ruin, only just being built. But the Enclave shows that this society is advanced, very advanced. The government in this book is not quite as sinister as those that appear in The Hunger Games or Uglies, but it is a controlling government just the same. This book is so cool, and sweet because it revolves around a connection between mother and daughter, unlike most dystopian books now. And it still has that romantic storyline running through it that we all seem to crave. Great story, great characters, great dystopian fiction.

Rating: 4/5