Holy cow!! I was completely blown away with this book.I just happened upon this book four days ago. Amazing story. I found this just after finishing the Hunger Games trilogy and felt just as connected with the characters here. Wow.

This book is so different from what I usually read, but I wasn't able to put it down! It's a really interesting concept (and scary, because it doesn't seem too far from the realm of possibility). I'll be thinking about this book for a while.

This was such an interesting book and I found myself rushing back to it whenever I put it down. It is not an easy book to read with subject matter that many will find offensive and hard to accept. For me, it was just a very captivating novel of a woman's transformative journey.

I would have given this book another star easily if the ending had been better. To me, the ending was rushed through, all wrapped up in just a couple pages. Such a shame given how riveting the rest of the story is.

Somewhere between two and three stars. It was such a great premise. But somehow the inconsistencies in Hannah's character never worked for me - and it seemed like all of her enlightenment just happened - like one second she thinks abortion is definitely murder, but the next it was okay for her to have done. And why was she super religious but okay with adultery until the very end? It read quickly enough but I just kept waiting for the depth it could have had.

I hated The Scarlet Letter with a passion (HATED it!!!), but I devoured this 'reimagining' of it in three days. In the very near and familiar future, most criminals in the US are not jailed; instead, they are free within the community, with their skin dyed a colour which corresponds to the category of their crime. This way, everyone who sees them will know what they have done; further, any member of the general public can find and track their physical location and personal details using online and mobile apps. The protagonist, the previously sheltered 'good girl' Hannah, lives in a very conservative state characterized by highly politicized religion, and is dyed red--for murder--for the abortion of the child she conceived in an adulterous affair with a man she refuses to name. A fascinating look at public shaming and some of the troubling implications of a form of punishment that I think we have all heard advocated at some point for certain crimes (ever heard people say that molesters should have a facial tattoo or a public-access tracking device? How about we extend that to thieves and drug users, too? Where does it stop? And should it?). The story starts immediately, with no lags, and while it is often introspective, it did not seem preachy to me. Though I don't agree with all of Hannah's choices in the book, in the end it was a very satisfying read.