A Review of 'Crossed' by Ally Condie

"Rules are different outside the Society.

Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky-- taken by the Society to his sure death-- only to find that he has escaped into the majestic, but treacherous, canyons.  On this wild frontier are glimmers of a different life and the enthralling promise of rebellion.  But even as Cassia sacrifices everything to reunite with Ky, ingenious surprises from Xander may change the game once again.

Narrated from both Cassia's and Ky's points of view, this hotly anticipated sequel to Matched will take them both to the edge of Society, where nothing is as expected and crosses and double crosses make their paths more twisted than ever."

It took a little longer for me to get into 'Crossed' than it did for me to get into 'Matched.'  The beginning was interesting because first of all, we are reunited with Cassia and Ky.  That's really nice because they were great characters in 'Matched.'  Now they're in a completely different setting.  They're in a completely different place than the Society.

There was a lot of running and walking around in this book.  This is what bothered me the most about this book.  Ky and Cassia (along with Eli, Indie, and a couple other characters) were walking around in search of each other and then the Rising.  I didn't feel like a lot of character development happened in this part and that would have been a perfect time for this to happen.  It's true, these characters have a number of choices that they need to make, but for me, it still feels like the characters are going about making these decisions in a way that they would have had they been forced to make them in the beginning of the book.  Cassia was still clinging to Ky and wanting nothing more than to touch him.  This is definitely part of being love, but in this case, it just felt clingy... and given the situation where they could be killed or discovered at any moment, it just didn't feel right.

I was also disappointed at the lack of The Rising.  There was a lot of talking about it, but it didn't really make an appearance until the last quarter or third of the book.  On one hand, I really wish that they had talked about it more, but on the other, I'm really excited to read about The Rising in action in the last installment of this trilogy.

I liked that we are able to learn a little more about Ky's history.  He's such a closed book that even the smallest glimpses were interesting to read about.  I look forward to piecing it all together in the next book.

Some of the individual characters were pretty interesting to read about.  I'm very interested in hearing more about Indie, the girl who was kicked out of the Society for attempting to escape to the ocean.  Eli, because he's so young, I still don't really know why he was exiled from the Society.  I know that whatever happened, it was by his own hand that he was reclassified.  I think Eli is the character that interests me the most.  I really do hope we hear more about him in the next book.

Overall, I wasn't as impressed with 'Crossed' as I was with 'Matched,' but there are several things in this book that are essential to know for the next book that it is a necessary read for this trilogy.

I give 'Crossed':

Thanks for reading!

--Jude