When She Woke

I was expecting a dark YA classic lit adaptation as a bit of a brain break after a heavy read, but this was not really a young adult book, and unexpectedly shared some themes around religion and morality with my previous book. Hillary Jordan riffs on The Scarlet Letter, bringing it forward in time and evoking Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for good measure. Hannah Payne lives in a near-future United States, in a world that has been changed profoundly by a mutated STD that caused a fertility crisis, a nuclear attack on Los Angeles, and a new way to deal with crime: an injection that literally changes a person's skin color for the duration of their sentence, with different shades correlating to different crimes. Hannah, born and raised in a conservative evangelical household in Texas, is a Red, reserved for crimes of violence. She's had an abortion, and refused to name both her doctor and the man who would have been the father of her child...who just so happens to be a mega-church preacher and newly appointed federal official, the pastor Aiden Dale. Once she's released from her brief prison sentence (in which she, like her fellow prisoners, is broadcast live to reality TV), she finds herself facing choices she never could have imagined before her ill-fated love affair. I've always had a soft spot for The Scarlet Letter, and I enjoyed the little callbacks to it, like Hannah's skill as a seamstress and a nod to Hester Prynne's daughter Pearl. There's a development near the end that felt a little forced, and an ending that lacked the satisfaction of the one that Nathaniel Hawthorne devised. There's also a lot of Hannah reckoning with her faith particularly and belief generally, contemplating the existence of a higher power in a world of profound injustice. It was more philosophically inclined than I'd expected. It was perfectly okay and I suspect I will hardly remember it six months from now.

I wanted so badly to LOVE this book. I wanted it to take up residence on my “favorites” shelf. The subject matter of this book, I just knew, as soon as I saw it, this was right up my alley. I promptly put it on my wish list over at barnes and noble, high priority, even. When I saw that the nookbook had one day dropped in price to $3.99 from $14+, I got that tingly feeling that only getting a much-wanted book at a bargain price can give.

The story started okay, explaining who the character was, her predicament and the hows and whys of how she got there. After that, the story pretty much dropped off and it just felt like it was all over the place and NOTHING was resolved. What happened to her sister and Cole? What happened to the people that ran the home she spent those six weeks at? There was mention that the Novembrists might do something to them, but nothing ever happened. Her situation with Aidan, I felt there was no resolution there either. I was sorely disappointed with the story and felt like the author just hurried up and finished. It's almost as if Hillary Jordan got tired of writing and said “screw it, I'm done, let's wrap it up and put a bow on it.” I give the book three stars because the idea behind the book is a good one and I did enjoy reading about that. This is just another one of those books that I feel the author could've done so much more with.