Title: Crossed
Author: Ally Condie
Release Date: November 1, 2011
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
My Rating: 5 stars
Recommended For: Dystopian Ya Fans
"Rules Are Different Outside The Society
Hi there.
Welcome to my blog. This is my first post so please feel free to comment or
even email me at siriusblack5@me.com with some pointers. Because I need all the
help I can get.
Wow. I picked this book up over a year after I read Matched, and let me just say this: it did not disappoint. I thought I would have forgotten a lot but within the first few pages, I remembered everything. I loved Matched, but I liked Crossed even more for several reasons. In, Matched the first half of the story was a lot of explaining. Crossed was filled with action, but at the same time built up the story even more by showing, not telling.
I loved the characters.The story was told in two povs, which alternated between Cassia and Ky. Disappointingly enough, Xander wasn't a big part of the story. But it mentioned him a lot, so there was no way you could forget about him. Several new characters were introduced, and I fell
completely in love with all of them.
Quite a few reviews said that they thought Crossed was a filler book. I'll tell you right now that it wasn't. It was definitely necessary to the plot. I don't want to spoil anything, so let's just say that a whole new side of the rebellion is introduced. And the lines between good and evil, right and wrong start to blur. Throughout this, however, Cassia and Ky never lose sight of each other.
I also loved how unpredictible the book could be. At times I found myself staring at its pages thinking, "OMG... Did that really just happen."
Now here comes what I didn't like about Crossed... Dun dun dun. One of the things that really bothered me was how the story would make a big deal out of things, then the next second it wasn't a big deal anymore. For example, (this is the only one I could think of without really spoiling things) Cassia had to run like thirty miles while trying not to die, and barely anything was written on that. The book seriously could've had 100 more pages and it would've been better. Another random thing I didn't like that probably didn't bother anyone else was how it described Ky and his friends watching a fish die. Really? Was that really necessary?
All in all, this book was a captivating read for me. I was able to overlook its flaws pretty easily, and I'm definitely looking forward to Reached.