17 year old Ember Miller is wanted by the morality police because she was born out of wedlock, and because she escaped the reformatory where the government police threw her to be re-programmed. Breaking Point by Kristen Simmons takes a look into the not-too-far future after a long, hard war turns the government into a totalitarian run, Nazi-like country where citizens fear retribution even for new laws that are made retroactive.
In this second book of the Article 5 series Ember has escaped the government run reformatory where life was about being brainwashed and terrorized. On the run with Chase, her neighbor and first crush, and the young man who helped arrest both Ember and her mother, she is torn between an old life and this new, harder outlaw life.
Breaking Point is face paced and gritty, probably not for young adults under thirteen. There’s death, murder, torture and romance in the backdrop of a terrifying potential future.
The author’s voice is crisp and powerful. You really feel for each of the characters and what they are going through. The sense of injustice is overpowering and you feel yourself nearly becoming Ember as you grown angry, despondent, sad, empowered and a wide variety of other emotions on a roller coaster of events as she discovers herself and her place in this new life.
You can find out more on the author’s website. Oh! And there’s a book trailer for it!
