Article 5 by Kristen Simmons

Amazon Description: "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The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.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."

My Review: Article 5 is the most realistic dystopian book I have ever read, and I loved that about it. The society is only about maybe five, ten, fifteen years ahead of our own society and that makes it all the more disturbing---because this is a society I could easily see happening to us, sometime in the future. Because the dystopian society in the book is eerily similar to what Hitler created during World War II, and the world is so close to ours---so it stands to reason that something like this COULD happen. Which is very creepy, but also really cool to think about. The plot was really good. The first half of the book was kind of slow and seemed more like one of those books about corrupt boot camps, because we didn't get to see much of the dystopian world. However, the second half of the book was pretty amazing. Ember became pretty tough and kick-ass and I loved how she still retained her emotions and humanity throughout, and didn't just become a cold fighting machine (*ahem* KATNISS *ahem*). The story became really exciting and fast-paced the second half of the book, and that's what made me love the book. A very good dystopian! 

Cover: To be honest, I think they could have done better with the cover. It seems just like a distorted copy of the cover of Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari, and it didn't seem to make sense with the book, considering they weren't really close to any major cities for about 95% of the book. Ah, well. 

Overall Grade: A+