After Reading: ARTICLE 5 by Kristen Simmons

By: Meradeth Houston on 4:00 AM

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The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.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

This was quite an interesting read! At the beginning, I actually had to put it down a couple of times because I could feel my blood coming to a boil at the actions of the government and certain characters. The Moral Statutes and MM within the novel represent pretty much everything that I disagree with. It made me so frustrated to see what Ember had to deal with. And the most frustrating part, for me, was knowing just how easily that kind of thing could actually happen in our world. But Ember and Chase were great characters, strong and growing. I appreciated their relationship and their will to resist. I did sometimes want to see a bit more world building with what happened during the war and how/what led to things being the way they were, but there were enough hints that I got a general idea. It was an interesting read, for sure, and I'm looking forward to catching the rest of the series (and the last book's out, which always makes reading a series so much nicer!).

Have you had a chance to catch this one?