The Mess Called His Barcode Tattoo Novel Review

• Title: His Barcode Tattoo
• Author: Ivy Song
• Genre: Romance
• Idea: 5/10
• Writing : 2 / 10
• Story: 3/10
• Status: Completed
• Overall rating: 3.5 out of 10

By the rating, above you guys probably have somewhat guess what will go down.
So let us start.

First thing first, His Barcode Tattoo is a Web-Novel written by author Ivy Song. In October 2016 it was first published under Tapas as an original novel. Later in 2017, July Wishroomness lends their art and brought the characters alive.

Since there were two individual versions – Web-Novel & Webtoon – I decided to do separate reviews. The Novel will be discussed here. And you can also read Is the webtoon His Barcode Tattoo worth your Ink? – His Barcode Tattoo Webtoon Review. There is a also short review comparing – not really- both the novel and webtoon. It is for those who don’t want to read two reviews. So you can check that one HERE.

Before the review, we will start with the synopsis.
“I wondered if people noticed it, the numbers. It wasn’t long before I realized I was the only one who saw them.
I found out what the numbers meant when I was fifteen. The numbers that appeared on the neck of every person I met…predicted when and where they would die. I was the only one who knew when someone would expire.
But Sehun was different from the others.
He didn’t have a bar code.” – Source Tapas.
The webtoon version also has the same synopsis. This is also basically the first chapter and all that His Barcode Tattoo Novel has to offers.

It is a shame cause the web-novel even after almost 5 years is the 3rd Trending series in Romance, 4th in All Genres. And is still on the top 15 Popular Romance Series with about 285.6k views, 209k subscribers, and 8.8k likes.

And with these numbers, you will think, this is a good read. But it isn’t.

I went into His barcode Tattoo, without reading any reviews, going blind. I read the synopsis. It seemed interesting. Since it was already completed, I decided it would be best to binge it.
It has a total of 35 chapters and 31 of them were locked. So I used 4500 Ink – a payment system in Tapas – to unlock it all to enjoy.
The second chapter in and I started to regret that decision very, very much.

The idea of the story was interesting. The synopsis, really made me wanted to read it. It sounded promising. Even the prologue was gripping. But when you start the actual chapter, it just goes downhill from there.

The writing is very…amateur-ish. I wish I could have said this nicely but that is how it felt. A lot of missed marks. A proper editor was needed to save the story. Not for the grammar but for the plotline and inconstancy in the story.

If you ignore the writing then there is the pace. It will give you whiplash. In a single chapter – chapter 2! -the characters went from knowing each other to in love with them……Everyone in the comment was like, ‘What is happening?’

In 5 chapters we had everything. They meet, fell in love, and were dating. It was insane how fast the pace was.

And the more I read, the more it reminded me of early boy band Fanfictions. When a few of the comments also said the same thing, it got me thinking. So I went on the internet, did some searching and guess what I find?

It was an Exo – Korean Boy Band – Fanfiction.

Now there is nothing wrong with it being Fanfiction. I used to write them myself. Click it if you want to read my horrible writing, it has been years so…

Fanfictions is a great way for young authors to get their feet wet, try out ideas. And I have read Fanfictions that were 1000% deserved to be original books on their own.

But the problem with His Barcode Tattoo was that it wasn’t just fanfiction. It was a published novel. So from a published novel, I expected something polished. It isn’t the author’s fault – not all of it. There should have been an editor, not for grammar mistakes but who could have helped the author fix the plot holes, the insane fast pacing of the story, change of unnecessary POV in a single chapter without any indications, lack of character development, an unusual amount of cliches and dramatic twist that was thrown in and did nothing more to the story. With the bad writing and others, there was nothing His Barcode Tattoo had to redeem.

In the end, an amazing concept that was poorly executed. In 2016 maybe these types of stories worked but now with the availability of hundreds and thousands of amazing stories, the mess that His Barcode Tattoo is shining and not in the way it should be.

If you want you can read the Web-Novel HERE and the Webtoon HERE.

Obviously, this is my personal opinion. If you enjoy it then there is nothing wrong with it. But make sure you support the creators.

With this, I will end the review. Until next time, happy reading!

Ps. You guys can follow Hana Reads on Instagram and Twitter. Not all of the webtoons that we read makes it to the blog. So we are sharing about them there. Hope you guys check us out!

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