The Bar Code Tattoo Series by Suzanne Weyn

I am going to be reviewing a series today. It is a middle grade series and I first found out about it through Kellogg's Family Rewards. I wanted to read the series to start narrowing down my TBR shelf. I got the first book from the library. I will go in order of course. I gave the first two books 2 out of 5 stars each and I gave the last one 3 out of 5 stars.

1. The Bar Code Tattoo

I didn't really enjoy this book. I knew it was a middle grade before I started, but the writing style was really cringy. This book is set in the distant future of 2025. There is a company called Global-1 taking over the world basically and there is a tattoo that supposedly the best thing. It has everything on there. Paper money and coins don't exist. You scan your bar code for everything. Kayla is about to turn seventeen and that is when she is able to get her bar code. Her best friend Amber is such a shallow character and I thought about putting this book down several times because I disliked these characters within the first few pages. There are two cases of instant love and it was so unbelievable. Two days after getting together with a guy, I love you. Realize a couple more days later, that dude is lying to you and trying to trap you and you run away with another guy and spend a week with him, I love you. Let's never part....ugh.... GAG ME!

That's basically what happened throughout most of the pages. At the very end, we find out that everyone's genetics are also being encoded into the bar code and that it is keeping people from getting jobs, losing jobs, keeping them from getting insurance because insurance companies aren't wanting to pay for sick people.

I think this would have been a great story if the author wasn't stuck in a teenager mind set when she wrote this.

2. The Bar Code Rebellion

We pick up where we left off with Kayla and her "boyfriend" Mfumbe. She is still in hiding in the mountains with the other bar code resisters who are working on their telepathy and trying to contact aliens. They go to the rally in Washington D.C. and the rally gets pummeled and many of the rally goers are resisters who get arrested because in the first book, the Bar Code Tattoo is now law for those 17 and under. Kayla gets saved by a truck driver that she met in the first book and gets taken to the desert in Arizona and leaves Mfumbe and their friend August behind. They then find out that when the bar code is given, that nanobots are injected into the blood stream and it can cause a variety of health issues. It can makes people sick, depressed and suicidal.

When Kayla gets to the caves she is instantly attracted to a guy there names Jack who is from Ireland and she constantly has to stop herself from getting intimate with him because she wants to be loyal to Mfumbe. This is another case of bad insta love because Kayla's thoughts go straight to sex and she's glad that someone's always with them to keep them from doing it. They eventually get Global 1 to admit all their wrong doings and the resisters figure they have finally won against the government.. or so they thought. We also find out that Kayla is a clone... a sextuplet clone.

The writing style improved a little from the first book, but I was still annoyed with the character Kayla. Her character did have some growth to her obviously with the telepathy, but not much personality wise.

3. The Bar Code Prophecy

This one had to be my favorite. It is set 6 months after the second one and we follow a girl named Grace. She works as a receptionist in the Global 1 headquarters that was attacked by the Bar Code resisters. She is about to turn 17 and she is excited to get her tattoo. That tattoo is still the law but they are still adding genetic information to the code for hospital personnel only. The one thing that they added after everything was a tracking device. On the day of her birthday, after she gets her tattoo, she gets told by her boss to leave work and to go straight home.

She is immediately wanted by the Global 1 police because when she was born, she was given up for adoption. She is the daughter of a very powerful man and Global 1 wants to hold her as a ransom to get this very powerful man's new project. The group from the first two books and also a guy who she is in love with who works secretly as a postman comes to save her and she has to stay hidden from the tracking satellite who has her pegged every time she makes a move.

We learn of prophecies and a meteor heading towards Earth. The writing style got much better in this story and this one was much more believable that the first two. I liked this one more because it included events like the BP oil spill in 2010 and the company Global 1 was finally destroyed by the meteor, along with the rest of the Earth. Grace and Eric were likable characters.