Review: "When She Woke," by Hillary Jordan

In a not-too-distant future, criminals are punished with having their skin colored according to their crime. They're put on live TV in their cells for a period of 30 days while the chemical change takes place in their bodies and then they're sent to carry out their sentence in the real world. Hannah was a sweet, kind, and thoughtful Texas Christian woman. At 26, she was sentenced to 16 years to live as a Red, the skin color assigned to murderers. Hannah had fallen in love with a married man and became pregnant. She submitted to an illegal abortion and was caught. She refused to name the man whom she was with and also refused to name the man who performed the abortion. Once in the world as a Red, she goes to a halfway house where she is supposed to repent for her sins and make her way back to God, but the people who run the house are not what they seem and she chooses to leave. Soon, she is pursued by a vigilante group who call themselves the Fist, a violent group who find and kill Chromes of all colors, but especially women who have had abortions. Luckily, her silence about who helped her with the abortion put her on a safety watch for another group of revolutionaries trying to smuggle Chromes to Canada where they will be safe. Often, Hannah wonders how this became her life, but she grows from a weak sheep to a brave lion throughout the course of her journey.

I really enjoyed this novel. It was a pretty quick read and kept me invested in the storyline. How frightening is this world we live in when I can easily imagine this happening in today's society? Yikes.

Mrs. Denney's Rating: ***

#review #violence #sciencefiction #dystopian #adult