THE GOOD CITIZEN

A safety officer’s daughter and a newly naturalized citizen decide where their allegiances lie in Doty’s YA dystopian debut.

As a requirement for induction into the Safety Officer Academy, Jenny Morgan must act as a buddy to an “opportunity person”—a teenager who’s recently moved out of the immigrant ghettos known as Homesteads to become an American citizen. Although Jenny wants to become a safety officer like her mother—and work with the “viewers,” who monitor people at all times—Jenny would rather spend time flirting with her crush, the rebellious Kyle Foster, than watching over her “buddy,” Hannah Cossack. Hannah, the daughter of a Ukrainian immigrant, is having trouble adjusting to citizen life; Jenny’s friends bully her, and she’s uncomfortable with the law stating that all citizens over the age of 14 must carry a gun called a "Protector." Kyle introduces Hannah to bad-boy Jonah and their anti-Governcorp group, but Hannah worries that joining it herself would endanger her family. Although most citizens mindlessly follow instructions from the Broadcasters (a type of public-address system), Kyle announces his intention to protest at the upcoming government-run parade, and for the first time, Jenny and Hannah are forced to make decisions for themselves. Should Jenny report Kyle to her mother? And should Hannah endanger her family’s fragile new citizenship to fight alongside him? The messages in this novel lack subtlety, and similarities to dystopian classics, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, prevent the worldbuilding from feeling truly fresh. A debate about peaceful and violent protest is brought up only briefly and could have used more nuance, and any discussion of racism’s role in anti-immigrant sentiment is conspicuously absent. Even so, the novel’s exploration of pro-gun trends feels chillingly real. Alternating first-person narration allows readers to empathize with both Jenny’s and Hannah’s multifaceted moral dilemmas. Although much of the novel is focused on everyday school life—with its unquestioned emphasis on shopping and crushes—the suspense eventually builds to a frantic pace during the parade, and the open-ended conclusion will force readers, too, to think for themselves.

A sometimes-engaging novel with unsubtle but timely morals.