book review: Swipe by Evan Angler

Title: Swipe
Author: Evan Angler
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, May 2012,  Kindle & paperback, 288 pages
Reading Level: Ages 8 and up

• ISBN-10: 140031836X
• ISBN-13: 978-1400318360

Evan Angler’s middle-grade novel Swipe takes place at a future time when society has been through ecological upheaval, shortages, plague, and war. But leaders General Lamson and Chancellor Cylis have remedied all that with many innovations including the mark, a nano-dust arm tattoo every 13-year-old gets on his or her birthday. This makes each a full member of society, able to get a job, earn money, shop, bank, and vote.

For Logan Langly and his family, life goes along smoothly in the small town of Spokie until the day Logan’s older sister Lily goes to get her mark and never returns. Now Logan’s 13th is just around the corner and he’s jumpy. What if the same thing happens to him? Add to that the fact that he feels like he’s being watched and things in his room get moved while he’s out. Despite his obsessive checking of the whole house morning and night, he never catches the culprit.

Enter Erin, the new girl from Beacon City. Her dad works for Dome, the futuristic equivalent of the CIA. She hates it that she had to leave her mom and home because of Dad’s job. She snoops through his stuff with a view to helping him solve his case in Spokie speedily so her family can be together again. With her code-cracking, internet savvy smarts, she’s soon up to her neck in mystery as she joins Logan in his quest to find out if there truly is someone following him, why, and whether Lily’s disappearance was sinister or just an explainable mark intolerance.

I loved the book’s setting which gives us Angler’s answers to questions like, What if fuel runs out? What if land is at a premium? What if all the trees are dead? What if paper is rare to non-existent? What if people are discouraged from thinking for themselves?

Main character Logan is sympathetic and likeable, though a little wimpy. Strong girl Erin makes this a PC book that will help it pass muster with the feminists (and their mothers) in the crowd. The book’s intended middle-grade audience will relate well, I think, to the dynamics between characters at school and in social settings, like a futuristic rock concert complete with wailing mitts.

The boyfriend-girlfriend angle is played up too. The book probably portrays that aspect of tween to early teen relationships realistically, though given the fact that kids as young as Grade 3 (“ages 8 and up”) will probably read this book, some of the scenes seemed more appropriate to YA than mid-grade fiction (kids fantasizing about relationships with the opposite sex, hugging and kissing with attendant thrills described, time spent alone in bedrooms with someone they ‘like,’ though nothing happens and the “dates” are not much more than long walks).

The mark is an obvious reference to the Mark of the Beast from the Bible (Revelation 13:16-18), but other references to faith or a specific religion are pretty much absent. The book does explore themes of conformity, family, secrets, courage, loyalty, truth, and what the future could be like.

There’s lots to like in Angler’s lively and quirky writing style. For example:

“But Erin was worked up. And for no good reason she thought of bedtime reading and Shakespeare in pajamas, and then her heart broke in two and it sank and burned in little pieces in the acid of her stomach and suddenly she was very worked up and she said, ‘Are either of you even trying anymore?” (Kindle Location 998).

and:

“Peck assumed the look of a man choosing his words so carefully that none came out” (KL 4298).

and:

“He’d never walked so deep into a building so big and so swallowing” (KL 4637).

For a surprise-filled adventure set in a futuristic world with realistic, likeable characters, Swipe is a good choice. It releases May 1st with an ending that sets readers firmly on the path to Sneak, Book 2 in the Swipe series, due out in the fall of 2012.

Read a  sample

Author's website

Swipe trailer

(I received this book as a gift from the publisher for the purpose of writing a review. This review was first published at Blogcritics.org)

This book is included in Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books - April 21st edition. Go visit, for links to lots more reviews.

book review: Behind the Veils of Yemen by Audra Grace Shelby

If you’ve wondered what life is like for the veiled women of the Middle East, this book is a revelation. Author Audra Grace Shelby, along with her husband Kevin, were Baptist missionaries to Yemen for nine years. In Behind the Veils of Yemen, Shelby tells the story of that time. She describes in detail the friendship with her language tutor Fatima. She also tells about incidents that stretched her faith like the sickness of her husband and her daughter, and the birth of her fourth child.

I love Shelby’s creative non-fiction style. A skilled storyteller, she helps us experience Yemen and her Yemeni friends, their homes, celebrations, and customs through color, touch, sound, and smell. Using specific detail she recreates incidents in settings as varied as a hospital room, a beach-side vacation cottage, and the home of Fatima. Here we see a Yemeni market:

“We arrived at the suq, an open-air Yemeni market. On one side of the entrance women sat on the ground with round stacks of pancake-like bread. They wrapped them in newspapers and waved as we approached.


On the other side of the entrance four men displayed aluminum trolleys with mounds of glossy dates, pressed together in sticky cubes. They flicked swarming flies with rags tied to sticks and called to us to sample a date.” – p. 75.

Her recall of events and details is quite amazing (she must have kept detailed journals), as is her ability to analyze people and situations. Of Fatima she says:

“She had a manner that was both transparent and secretive, faltering and arrogant, all at the same time” – p. 50.

When she attends a women’s wedding celebration and is coaxed to dance with the women, she reluctantly complies. After she makes her clumsy way across the floor, the reaction of the onlookers surprises her:

“Applause thundered from the crowd of women around me …. They were beaming at me. I realized they were pleased more by my willingness to dance with them than they were by my skills in dancing.” – p. 68.

I enjoyed the book for a variety of reasons.

I loved the glimpse Shelby gave me into the world of veiled women. Never had I imagined that under their black burqas may be vivid caftans, bejeweled silk scarves, even the odd mini-skirt. She introduced me to a vibrant and cohesive female community which is devoutly religious and has its own colorful wedding and funeral rituals.

Despite the exotic setting, Shelby’s story showed me that mothers everywhere struggle with the same things. I ached for Fatima as she tried to find reasons why her almost year-old baby was still not holding up his head or sitting unsupported. One of Shelby’s own mothering crises resolved when she faced the question: “Do you trust Me (God) without having to know why?” It is a question Christian mothers are bound to face wherever they live.

Finally, I found Shelby herself inspirational. I admired the way she parented her kids, stifling her own anxieties in order to keep them feeling safe and distracting them with made-up stories instead of sweeping them into the vortex of her own tensions. Her sensitivity to her women friends’ customs and feelings along with her generosity, kindness, and passion to introduce them to Jesus were beautiful to witness.

I have one little beef with the book. It has no table of contents; thus it’s hard to locate passages one has read without using a bookmark or dog-earing the pages.

The end-matter alerts us to the fact that the name of the author and her family members have been changed to protect friends whose work goes on in the Middle East. You can find out more about the book, the author’s experiences in the Middle East, and her current speaking schedule from her website and Facebook page.

(I received this book as a gift for the purpose of writing a review.)

Title: Behind the Veils of Yemen
Author: Audra Grace Shelby
Publisher: Chosen - reprinted edition September 1, 2011, paperback, 238 pages.
ISBN-10: 0800795180
ISBN-13: 978-0800795184

i'm in a book trailer! (Share It With a Sister Video)

I'm in a book trailer with my sisters! Angie Hunt invited sisters to send in their photos to be entered in a draw for her new book, The Fine Art of Insincerity (sounds like fun!). She's made multiple book trailers with the many sister photos people have sent in. Can you spot me with my three beautiful sisters? We make our brief appearance at about the 1:05 mark. More sister vids here.



Find out more about The Fine Art of Insincerity here. It releases in May 2011.