ACID by Emma Pass (review)

Jenna thought that at seventeen, she had figured out her rule for what remained of her life—be merciless to anyone who tries to mess with her in the maximum-security prison where she is one of few female inmates, after having been tried and sentenced as an adult for murdering her parents. She doesn’t expect that people are going to risk their lives to help her escape, but that’s exactly what happens, and suddenly Jenna’s mixed up in a large-scale plot to take down ACID, the brutal police force that has been in power since the British government handed over control in the mid-twenty-second century. Although she struggles mightily against being used by anyone, good or bad, Jenna is essentially a pawn, first being renamed by the good guys and then receiving an actual brain adjustment from the bad. The concept—the layering of the protagonist as she first claims a new identity and then has her memory adjusted—is admirably intriguing, but ultimately four versions (there’s yet another forcible memory shift in her past that she doesn’t learn about until later) of the same character makes for a muddled narrative. In addition, the resistance force is poorly described, and it’s led by a character so one-sided that his evil is uninspiring rather than threatening. Nevertheless, a tough chick who can protect herself admirably, especially one who turns out to be way more sympathetic than she first appears, may still find a ready audience in character-driven YA readers.