A review by eesh25
Crossed by Ally Condie

2.0

Crossed is the sequel to Matched. The one that a lot of people found disappointing. I agree with those "lot of people".

In the end of the last book, Ky was taken by The Society and placed in the Outer Provinces, where he would probably die. Cassia decided that she wasn't okay with that and swore to find him. In this book, we follow the both of them navigating new lands while a rebellion against The Society seems to be brewing.

And that, my friends, is a good plot. If only the book was as good. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to its predecessor. You see, the best parts about Matched were the world, the writing and the fact that the love-triangle wasn't dragged. In this book, we already know the world and the writing doesn't match up to what the author is trying to achieve.

Matched was a pretty soft read. A large part of it was focused on the romance so the poetic writing made sense. But there is a time and a place for poetry, and a freaking rebellion ain't it.

There was no fervor to the book, something that's necessary for a revolt. There was no grit that you'd expect from a book which has people dehydrating, being shot, starved or bombed to death. It was like Luna Lovegood narrating a tragedy. And it was boring; though that could be credited to the extremely slow pace and the lack of anything happening.

As for the love-triangle that I thought we were done with... It's back. And I don't know if I've said this enough, but I fucking hate love triangles! Especially ones that are unnecessarily dragged to death. Like this one. It had no reason, sense and place in the book and only served to make me dislike Cassia, who already wasn't getting many points with her naivety, happy ignorance and I'm-totally-right syndrome. And then when she blatantly admit to wanting both Ky and Xander all for herself, I wanted to stab her. The whole deal was irritating, exhausting and fucking stupid.

Next we have the plot. Wasn't much there to be honest. This was another bridge book. Meaning the second book in a trilogy that serves no purpose other that to get us to the third one. Except, in this case, I'm not even sure that I'm reading the third one, Reached.

I mean, I don't care about what will happen, I have no attachment to the characters and from the reviews I've read of Reached, I won't be missing much from skipping it.

Now, I'm sure that from my review so far, it seems that there's nothing good about the book. That's not true. The writing is still good even if it doesn't fit the plot as well. The new things we find out about the world are cool. I'm curious about a character that was introduced, Indie, and the ending was okay. It's just that most of the important stuff got shoved back to focus on the poetry and it was infuriating. Cassia, why don't you focus on the people who are fucking dying?!

Overall, I'm glad to be done reading this one. And the third one probably won't happen.