[Blog Tour] Scan by Walter Jury, Sarah Fine
Tate has no idea why his dad insists upon him being perfect. With only his loving girlfriend as his sanctuary, Tate is emotionally distant from a father who spends most of his time developing inventions that Tate could not understand. What starts as a prank when he brings one of his dad's inventions to school turns into an action-filled chase resulting in his father's death, and him discovering that the world has been infiltrated by human-looking aliens... and that what he's holding in his hands could potentially start a war millions do not know that they're part of.
The ball starts rolling pretty quick when Tate sneaks into his father's supposedly secret workroom and brings to school one of his shiny, albeit "useless", inventions. All hell inevitably breaks loose, and immediately, readers are taken on a wild romp with Tate and his super girlfriend, Christina, as they try to outwit, outsmart, and outrun the aliens who wouldn't hesitate to kill them for the invention.
I did like Tate's predilection for making science seem cool with all the makeshift inventions of his own in lieu or boring firearms, and how well he works with Christina in tandem. While she is the girlfriend who just gets roped into this whole mess, Christina is very level-headed and it almost seems like she's used to being chased down by homicidal aliens. Tate's need for proof, or at least a hint, of his father's love is bittersweet, as readers would find out for themselves in the book.
Fast-paced and quite riveting this book may be, Scan felt overly long sometimes, which I can't fault it for since I am not an action flick kind of girl. And while I did like the characters, it did feel like there wasn't enough of their characters shining through that made them tangible or corporeal-like to me.
Scan would undoubtedly appeal to huge fans of alien-themed action movies. I like my alien movies mostly rom-com (like Stephenie Meyer's The Host, no judging please) so I probably wasn't the best audience for this. Scan was nonetheless quite interesting to read, if only because I, too, won't be surprised if aliens actually live amongst us, and because I didn't realize that I can pelt out predators with oranges in the event that I'm near a grocery. (Thanks, Tate.)
