Lisa Reviews: Allie Condie's - "Crossed"

This trilogy has been everywhere, both in the blogosphere but also in the real world. It’s received multiple five star ratings, and has amazing reviews all over the Internet! But for some reason, I’m still only on the second book, when the third one came out a while ago. (I guess I’m a little late! Oops!)

The first thing I’m sure most of us say about this book is, look at this beautiful cover! I LOVE white covers; they look so clean and neat, and bright. If you’ve read the first segment in this series, Matched, then you know why each of the colors are different.

Matched, Crossed, and Reached just look FABULOUS on my shelf!

I absolutely adored Matched and while I was more than ecstatic to read Crossed, I was fearful of “second book syndrome”. I know each and every book in this trilogy has a huge number of great reviews, but I always find it creeping around the corner.

The second instalment in this series takes place a few months (weeks?) after Matched ends. Ky has been sent to the Outerlands to work and basically die, while Cassie was sent to a work camp, where she’s currently getting ready to be moved to her next assignment.

Cassia can’t seem to get her mind off Ky and knows she has real feelings for him. She spends a lot of time thinking and planning of a way out of this camp, and all the security that comes with it, to find Ky. But Cassia isn’t so sure of herself any more when Xander comes to visit her before she departs, and even gives her a gift. Xander reminds her of home, her old life, and what her future could be like, if she picked Xander.

But her heart is still aching for Ky…

Cassia sneaks out with a strange girl named Laney; who she doesn’t seem to know much about, but Laney seems to be trustworthy and very skilful. On the other side of the spectrum Ky is escaping his death with two other guys, Vick and a boy who just arrived to the camp.

Will Cassia ever be able to find and catch up to Ky? Will she end up picking Ky or will she decide on a safe and secure like with Xander? And why did Xander sneak Cassia so many blue pills, knowing what they do to someone in the Outerland?

Okay, so let’s get to all the rumours that are being passed around about Crossed. Back when I first started reading reviews on Matched, many people stated in their reviews that the story was very slow, but good. Once I read Matched, I agreed, but I liked the pace. Condie is building a world, and it takes some time to get readers to know and understand how this world works.

So when people were saying that Crossed was slow as well, I didn’t really think much of it. But it’s true. I still really enjoyed Crossed, but I do see what people were talking about. There just wasn’t enough going on in this book for it to take as long as it did. The characters did a lot of reflecting throughout the story, which filled in the time, but I did find myself reading the pages a lot slower, and putting the book down more often than I did the first.

The thing I liked the most about Crossed (and the first book) was the way Condie goes about representing both Ky and Xander. She shows both to be handsome guys, and good in their own different ways. In a lot of YA books that I’ve read with love triangles in them, the authors always seem to focus on one person much more than the other, because they favor them more. But Condie doesn’t do that, she represents them both evenly, which leaves the reader in suspense about who Cassia might pick.

Overall, I really enjoyed Crossed, just in different ways than I did Matched. Crossed did leave the reader with a few unanswered questions, but I can’t judge the book on that, simply because there’s a third book. And hopefully all questioned will be answered then!