This review originally posted at More Than Just Magic 
 Swipe by Evan Angler has a fantastic premise. A futuristic America where people are required to be "marked" less they become social outcasts or pariahs. I had hoped it would challenge ideas of freedom and society and address current concerns of our present day - like every good dystopian novel should. But unfortunately from its strong premise and interesting set up the rest of the novel fell flat, and I had a hard time being engaged at all. 
 The story centres around two children - Logan and Erin. Logan is wary of the Mark. He thinks it is responsible for the death of his sister and he's also under the impression that he's being watched. Making him a very paranoid, and very scared little boy. Erin, who's just moved to town from the big city, is the opposite. She's the daughter of a government agent and she's pro-Mark and all it stands for. Together they form an unlikely alliance to try and take down one of the areas most notorious criminals. Both characters felt so cliched, so two dimensional that I was never able to connect with either of them. They were never any more than they had to be and I never saw any major character development from either one. 
 The pacing also felt a bit off. This was a high action book. There was a lot of running, some fighting, some spying. But it never had that sense of urgency that you would expect to find in such a story. I never felt overly excited about what was going on, I was never desperate to keep reading to see what happened next. I think more could have been done to build the tension and excitement of the whole situation in order to have the reader be really invested in the story. 
 The end of the story leaves a lot of questions about the government and what they're up to and for that reasons I am curious about the sequel. I am still planning on continuing this series to see with Evan Angler will address any of the issues I mentioned earlier, but I will keep my expectations low. 
 Recommendation: A dystopian novel that starts off strong but fails to capture the attention of the reader. Not recommended.