Book Review: Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien

Summary:

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It's Gaia's job to "advance" a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia's parents disappear.

As Gaia's efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she faces the brutal injustice of the Enclave and discovers she alone holds the key to a secret code, a code of "birthmarked" babies and genetic merit.

My thoughts:

Birthmarked is much darker than most dystopian novels I have read. I love how it is set in the Lake Superior area - the story somehow feels more real when it's set in a real place. All through Birthmarked we get a lot of information about how this dystopian world came about, and why the society is split between those inside and outside the wall, and all of this makes it a very believable setting. 

Gaia is a very reasonable sixteen-year-old, and she's got such a strong sense of what is right and wrong. She does not always make the smartest decisions, often based on how incredibly naive she still is, but that is what makes her feel real. None of the other characters felt as real to me, and I would have loved to see some of them described a little more. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why I didn't like Birthmarked as much as everyone else, but I think it mostly comes down to the similarities to so many other dystopian novels; the world divided into the haves and have-nots, and the teenage girl who can change it all. But then again, it works.

The cover:

Beautiful, but a little too cluttered for my taste.

My rating of this book:

3.5 stars out of 5

Want a second opinion? Check out these reviews written by some of my book blogging friends:

The Little Bookworm

Parajunkee

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Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien

Published: March 30th 2010

Pages (hardcover): 362

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

ISBN: 1596435690 (ISBN13: 9781596435698)

Full disclosure: Checked out at my local library

This book can be purchased from a number of local retailers and on-line book stores such as Amazon or The Book Depository (I'm not an affiliate of either). The latter store does by the way have free shipping to about 100 countries.