Susan the Librarian

THE BAR CODE TATTOO by Suzanne Weyn

Posted on October 8, 2011 Updated on October 26, 2011

Kayla has always been suspicious of the bar code tattoo.  Most people have switched over to the tattoo, throwing away their credit cards and driver’s licenses and allowing all of their bank accounts and important identifying information to be encoded on their arms for easy scanning and retrieval.  As Kayla’s seventeenth birthday approaches, her friend Amber tries to convince her to get the tattoo, but Kayla’s father has been acting strange ever since he got the tattoo himself.  When he commits suicide, her whole world turns upside down.  As her mother slips away into depression, and Amber’s parents are inexplicably fired and forced to move their family across the country, Kayla begins to get involved with Project Decode, a grassroots resistance movement run by an attractive, enigmatic boy named Zekeal who Kayla can’t help but fall in love with.

This book is a fast-paced dystopian suspense story, along the lines of The Hunger Games and Uglies.  It was recommended to me by a fifth-grader, but I think it would appeal most to middle and high school age teens.  Thanks for the recommendation, Laura!  It was a very fun read!