Book Review- Birthmarked

Today on the plane I finished Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien for a Traveling ARC Tour.

From Goodreads:

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents are arrested.

Badly scarred since childhood, Gaia is a strong, resourceful loner who begins to question her society. As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she herself is arrested and imprisoned.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, BIRTHMARKED explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where one girl can make all the difference, and a real hero makes her own moral code.
 
This book's interest level came and went and then came back for me.  In the beginning, I was enthralled.  A teen who was a midwife who had to give up a certain number of children every month?  How intriguing!  Then in the middle-ish, I sort of got a little bit bored, but then towards the end I got very intersted again.
 
Gaia was a good character.  She was wholesome and seemed to stick to her morals.  And Leon had me guessing.  I am still wondering what part he is going to have Gaia's life.  The ending definitely left me hanging, and according to the author's blog, there is going to be a sequel, which I will be picking up because I want to know what happens next to Gaia, Maya, and Leon.
 
Overall, this was an interesting dystopian novel that has a new take on the way the world could be.
 
I gave this book a rating of 3.5/5.
 
This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2010 100+ Reading Challenge: 87
2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 65
2010 Debut Author Challenge: 26
ARC Reading Challenge 2010: 64
 
*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review as part of the Traveling ARC Tours.