School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-What if your life's story was tattooed on your body for your whole community to see? In Leora's world, it is. Citizens are "inked" with tattoos to represent everything from their careers and family trees to the great joys and sorrows of their lives. When someone dies, his or her life is determined worthy-or not-by the government assessment of one's ink. If you're worthy, your skin becomes a book, a treasured and honored keepsake held by your family to remember you. If not, your skin is burned, your stories lost forever. The death of Leora's father still hangs heavily over what should be a joyful time-graduation, being assigned a prestigious career. As her father's trial comes nearer, Leora learns a terrible secret that might ruin her father's legacy and change her life forever. The promising opening chapters do not quite deliver. Leora believably grieves her father's death while questioning herself and deeply held societal beliefs, but other characters and story lines feel inconsistent. Few characters can accurately "read" ink-that is, see the story behind the tattoo-making the premise of a society without secrets somewhat perplexing. Still, an interesting concept combined with action and intrigue will hook teen readers. -VERDICT Purchase where lighter dystopia and realistic science fiction are popular.-Kelsey Johnson-Kaiser, St. Paul Public Library © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
An urgent fear of otherness permeates Broadway's eerie debut, set in a society where tattoos tell a person's life story and to be without them is to be unknowable. In Saintstone, lawbreakers are marked and publicly shamed, babies who die before getting their first tattoo are forgotten, and so-called "blanks" (whose bodies are free of tattoos) are loathed. Sixteen-year-old Leora's father is dead, his skin dried and bound into a book; she must unravel her family's secrets before the community's elders make a determination that he is to be forgotten, and the pages of his book burned. Through it's not fully clear why tattoos and skin books are the only ways a person can be remembered in this world, Broadway uses her unsettling premise to contemplate grief and loss, attempts to neatly categorize people and decisions as right or wrong, and the courage to push against norms in ways big and small. As Leora enters the adult world as an apprentice inker, Broadway elegantly depicts her discoveries and the way power can become manipulative, controlling, and deceptive. Ages 14-up. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.