Book Review :: Crossed, by Ally Condie

Crossed by Ally Condie
Series: Matched #2
Also in this series: Reached
on June 7th 2012
Genres: Dystopian, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 367
Goodreads

Chasing down an uncertain future, Cassia makes her way to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky--taken by Society to his certain 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.

On the edge of Society, nothing is as expected, and crosses and double crosses make Cassia's path more twisted than ever.

Last updated on 19 January 2022

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My thoughts on Crossed by Allie Condie

Crossed by Ally Condie, is the second in this trilogy and it continues the story of Cassie Reyes as she tries to figure out what the Society is, how to escape it, find the Rebellion and also find Ky, of whom she was separated from at the end of the last book.

You may recall, or just saw it on the review, me saying that I really enjoyed Matched. It was a really good book, and I gave it four stars. Crossed wasn’t as good. I mean, it was good, don’t get me wrong, and I did enjoy it. But perhaps some of the questions have now been answered, and although more have been raised, they aren’t as ‘oh-my-goodness-what-is-going-on’ as they were in Matched.

Rather than being in first person (although it actually still is), Ally Condie writes Crossed from Cassie’s perspective and also from Ky’s. That didn’t happen in the first one; it was all Cassie’s story, Cassie’s perspective. So now, every second chapter is from Ky’s eyes, his thoughts, his thinking. At first, I got really confused because I didn’t read the chapter title where it clearly said “Chapter Two: Ky” or whatever, so just a heads up about that. But then I was excited to read from Ky’s perspective.

The first half of the book, Cassie and Ky are separate, so each chapter is about what is going on where the character is at that time, but then when they finally meet up, the chapter’s flow on from each other, still keeping the alternating perspective structure. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it made sense in my head.

The whole book, from beginning to end, happens in one area, which was kind of annoying, and there wasn’t really a climax at the end like most books have. It was sort of ‘hey, we’ve wandered around the canyons for long enough, let’s get into this boat, go downstream and basically end up where we started’ ending.

It sorted of ended and I thought ‘Oh. Okay.’ But it was still good. There are some new characters who have their charms (and some that don’t), mysterious underground caverns and blue vials, as well as the colourful pills and banned poetry like “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night”, by Dylan Thomas. Although it wasn’t as exciting or as ‘what’s-going-to-happen-next’ as the last one, it was still a good book, and it did have a lot of detail about the Society that they live in and important pieces of information that will probably be needed in the next one.

If you have read Matched, do read Crossed to. I think, by the sounds of the last few pages of Crossed, that the next one, Reached, is going to be good!

Have you read Crossed by Allie Condie?