Article 5

Author: Kristen Simmons
Goodreads Rating: 3.80
Pages: 281
Format: Finished Copy

New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have been abandoned.

The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.

There are no more police—instead, there are soldiers. There are no more fines for bad behavior—instead, there are arrests, trials, and maybe worse. People who get arrested usually don't come back.

Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller is old enough to remember that things weren’t always this way. Living with her rebellious single mother, it’s hard for her to forget that people weren’t always arrested for reading the wrong books or staying out after dark. It’s hard to forget that life in the United States used to be different.

Ember has perfected the art of keeping a low profile. She knows how to get the things she needs, like food stamps and hand-me-down clothes, and how to pass the random home inspections by the military. Her life is as close to peaceful as circumstances allow.

That is, until her mother is arrested for noncompliance with Article 5 of the Moral Statutes. And one of the arresting officers is none other than Chase Jennings…the only boy Ember has ever loved.

Talk about a really great plot and premise. I’m not even sure where to start talking about this book because there were just a lot of great things within it. Not only was it a quick read, but I feel in with Ember and enjoyed her tone through the book. As the daughter of an irresponsible mother who didn’t seem to grow up, Ember did the growing up for her. I wish that we had seen a little more of her mom, but that was fine, what we did see of her made clear her love for her daughter and that although she had made mistakes, she was aiming to fix them.

I liked Ember although at times she exasperated me. She was smart but impulsive when the book started. When she first gets to the Rehabilitation school, she didn’t think clearly about her actions, she just went with it, which is fine in some cases, but when things like soldiers are patrolling your school, soldiers you have seen hit your friend? Maybe then you should think twice about trying anything. I was glad though that she started to wise up, although she did have her lapses in judgment, especially when it came to Chase.

I thought for a girl who grew up during a war in her own country, she was awfully naïve. I’m sure things may have been good in her area, but that didn’t stop her from knowing that things were bad in other places. She had the smarts not to walk around alone at the start of the book, but by the middle, she was willing to take her chances with perfect strangers after seeing who cruel other people were. Ember should have tried harder at trusting Chase who was someone who she knew from before who clearly had her best interests in mind, but she didn’t seem to care about that.

Oh Chase. Clearly Ember was unworthy of your affections, so you are more than welcome to love me. He did everything humanly possible to keep Ember safe including shield her from some awful truths, but that didn’t seem to be good enough for her. I wish that she had just sat up and realized that he was trying to help her rather than fighting him the whole way. I loved that they were able to reconnect after having been apart and even though the L word was used, I didn’t find it to be instalove, but rather a normal relationship. Through flashbacks we see how their relationship started and how it grew and was able to become something more. That even though time and circumstance changed, they both loved one another.

I loved the setting of this awful world that America became. It was a great example of how things can get out of control. I thought that the Articles were total horseshit and that punishing someone because they were born out of wedlock is just horseshit. The fact that people were stripped of all of their civil liberties is appalling and I just couldn’t believe it. I can’t wait to dig into the next book and see what is going to happen next.

The Courts Decision: