REVIEW #4 - Article 5 by Kristen Simmons

TITLE: Article 5

AUTHOR: Kristen Simmons

GENRE: dystopia, thriller, romance

PUBLICATION DATE: Jan 31st 2012

SYNOPSIS:

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The Bill of Rights has been revoked, and replaced with the Moral Statutes.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

REVIEW:

Cover

Nothing earth-shattering. It serves the purpose well, and I like the way the title corresponds with the shirt. ;)

Plot

As for the overall feeling, I'd say it's like Marie Lu's "Legend" meets Lauren Oliver's "Delirium". They're both quite average books (although I like Legend a lot) and the result is average, too.
It's dystopian, bad things happen to characters. I liked the fact that our main couple couldn't trust anyone besides themselves, and even trusting themselves was hard at times. The paranoia, the feeling of helplessness was quite well executed.
I wish the world-building was a wee bit more developed, though.

Characters

I have one major problem with them. While Ember and Chase, main characters, were quite well developed, there was next to none side characters. At first it was alright, but after fifth or seventh disappearance of a character after just a few pages, it started to get annoying. We are dumped with names of people we can't get attached to and by analogy, we don't care about them enough to get more engaged in the story. That was a major flaw for me. Besides Sean, who was the only side character that stuck around, everyone else was coming-and-going. I hope the characters introduced by the end of the book - like Wallace or Billy - will be around in the sequel.
That being said, I felt that the story was more the story of Chase, not Ember. It was told from her perspective, yes, but it was all about him. And because of that, I cared a lot more about our tormented little soldier than our main heroine. Her choices sometimes were stupid (especially by the end of the book).

Writing

I didn't have any problems with the writing. In fact, it was pretty solid, and less unnerving than any other book I read recently. First person POV tends to irritate me to say the least, or roll my eyes at times, but nothing like this happened while reading "Article 5". It was a true page turner for me, and I appreciated it. PAGE TURNERS ROCK!

Overall

Pretty solid, non-stop action-packed, awesome main hero (if you like the dark, brooding type that's not overdone at the same time). Definitely checking out the sequel!

Rating

3 stars out of 5.