Except (and you knew there was an 'except' coming, right?) when she finally fires up her microcard to see what sort of data they've given her about Xander, she glimpses a picture of somebody else. Most people aren't matched with somebody in their own Borough, so it's exciting and unusual, but to Cassia it feels right and comfortable.

But there's a good amount of adventure and action, even if the slow reveal of the FBR's true actions is a bit too easy to predict.Ĭassia attends her Match Banquet and is surprised to be matched with her best friend, Xander. It's not one that social conservatives are likely to enjoy - they're definitely the bad guys in this book. However, depending on your taste in books and politics, Article 5 can be a fun read. In real life I'd say that usually it's the guy who seems totally clueless about intentions and emotions, but for some reason in Article 5 Ember was the one who was blind to her circumstances. But I could see that Chase was doing everything in his power to keep Ember safe (and that the FBR was more dangerous than most civilians were aware) somehow Ember couldn't see past these imagined offenses and spent most of the book believing that Chase no longer had any feelings for her. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to tell you that she eventually finds that he still loves her, and she loves him - it is, after all, a YA novel. She finds Chase absolutely despicable for becoming a solider, for allowing her mother to be arrested, for changing. Maybe it's because I'm not a teenage girl, but I found myself incredibly frustrated with Ember for much of the book. And, this being YA fiction, Chase is there, too, a key part in her escape and a source of much emotional tension.

What follows is what you might expect: Ember escapes and spends the rest of the book on the run, aiming for a safe house in South Carolina, where there's an underground resistance building. When he returns, it isn't a happy homecoming - he's there to help arrest Ember's mother, and Ember herself is taken to a reformatory. Their parents are criminals, and they themselves are subject to rehabilitation.Įmber Miller is seventeen, old enough to remember life before the FBR, back before her best friend and neighbor Chase Jennings was drafted into the army. And then there's Article 5: children of unmarried parents aren't valid citizens. Marriage has finally been defined as one man, one woman divorce and abortion have been outlawed (Articles 2 through 4). It finally is a Christian nation, because it's against the law to be otherwise (Article 1).

A million suns by beth revis