Book 5: Crossed

Even though it took me a while to get into Matched, after I finished it, I really wanted to read the rest of the series, so for book five I chose Crossed by Ally Condie.

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*If you haven't read the book Matched, you may want to stop reading this review as there may be spoilers ahead*

Book Summary:
Crossed begins a mere months after Matched ends, Ky has been sent to the Outer Provinces with other Abberations and Anomolies to be eliminated (though they are told they are going to fight the Enemy), and Cassia has been sent to a work camp by her parents in hope that she can get close enough to where Ky is located to escape and find him.

When Cassia mistakenly gets transferred to the provinces, she finds out that just a few days before she arrived Ky escaped with Vick, a fellow soldier, and Eli, a young kid, to the Carving, a place where they believe they will find the farmers, a group of people who live peacefully outside of the Society. Cassia and Indie, a friend from the work camp, decide to escape and follow Ky. After days of being in the wild, the two reunite. From there they must make a decision to either follow the farmers, who have left the Carving, or join the Resistance.

My Review:
I liked this book more than Matched. Since Cassia and Ky were already defined prior to this novel, Condie was able to go deeper into those characters and really dig into who they are and why they think the way they do. I really liked how even though Cassia dislikes the Society at this point and is contemplating joining the Resistance, she is still naive to the fact that nearly everything they have told her was a lie. She still ultimately trusts most of what she grew up with. It's interesting to see her work through that a little. I also liked that we got to see more of Ky's back story of growing up in the Outer Provinces and what happened to his parents.

My favorite thing about this book, however, was the introduction of the new characters. I loved Indie. Throughout most of the book, she was so mysterious that I kept going back and forth on whether she was going to be a good guy or a bad guy. Eli and Vick were also good character introductions, I enjoyed reading how Vick got to the point of going from being a citizen to being sent to the Outer Provinces to fight.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was that it is not really a stand-alone novel. It is most definitely the middle of a story. Nothing much really happens other than getting to know the characters a bit more than we did in the previous book, and the entire book just feels like a set up for the third book. I realize that most trilogies are written for the second book to be a set up for the third, but many of them still have a really good story that goes with it, this really didn't.

Overall, I would recommend this to anyone; however, I would not recommend picking this up unless you've previously read (and enjoyed) Matched and plan on reading Reached. Like the first in the series, there is little, if any, swearing and no sexual references, only a bit of kissing.

My Rating: 7/10