By Cynthia Ayala

The United States is debt free, but only because it was bought out by Valor National Bank that plays by new rules. Bottom line, read the fine print. Debt collectors are now assassins that give them three options: pay, die, or become one of them. Patse was given those choices when they came for her mother. Now she has a hit list, a van, and a job. Protect her mother at by getting blood on her hands.

Hit by Delilah S. Dawson was published on April 14, 2015 by Simon Pulse. A young adult thriller that paints a dystopic future for America that seems closer to reality than it is fiction.

Frightening real, Hit is a home run that is scary enough to make the reader stop and think about the reality. In today’s world, corporations are everywhere, buying up small business and politicians alike. It is the reality that many people have seen and don’t even stop to think about it, and with corporations continuously on the rise, this book hints at a very possible and scary future where debt may not exist but America is officially controlled by corporations. This gives the reader much to think about and for young adult’s it is a warning about debt. Debt is scary no matter your age and for young adult entering college, credit cards can easily become the dangerous crutch many rely on for food and supplies, and that’s incredibly frightening which makes this book is incredible.

This novel follows one protagonist who is eager to save her mother’s life who has fallen into debt through no fault of her own. Patsy is a regular girl working a part time job to help pay the bills and save up for college, there is nothing extraordinary about her except her love to her mother and the strength she has within herself to do what she has to do. She is an incredibly relatable character who could be anyone, that is the power of her, of Dawson’s ability to create her. Everything about Patsy is real; she can be a friend, a neighbor or the reader themselves. However, the best thing is it doesn’t stop with Patsy. In her travels to confront the people on her hit list, she meets people who, again, could be anyone. A girl with student debt, a single dad paying house repairs, a young girl who likes to spend money on herself, these are all characters who are real, and it’s not just what has gotten them in debt that makes them real, it’s the way they respond and their actions that make them such relatable characters. All of this only makes the novel even more powerful because not only does this future that seems dreadfully close, but to have characters so strongly relatable makes the novel seem incredibly real.

There are some problems with it that make it somewhat incredulous, the police doesn’t seem to present at all, as if they don’t exist and that sort of chaos and anarchy doesn’t seem to fit within the context of the novel and the world. Without some sort of order, there is no need for credit card companies. This is the biggest fault in the novel, but compared to Patsy’s powerful narrative and the story’s realism, it can easily for forgotten as Dawson’s Hit sucks the reader in. (★★★☆☆ | B+)