Crossed, By Ally Condie

Book 4/50, 2014

Upon hungrily thumbing through the pages of the second novel in Ally Condie’s Matched trilogy, Crossed, I was highly entertained and thoroughly engrossed in the romance. Crossed was action packed, and the book’s setting wasn’t what I expected but offered a ton of character growth and quickly paced scenes. I was rooting for two main characters in particular, and was on the edge of my seat until their paths crossed once more.

What I enjoy about Condie’s writing of a teenage love triangle is that there’s no forced bullshit. She rarely makes you think that the protagonist, Cassia, is flip flopping in such a way that she doubts her love for Ky. I find that transparency is hard to come by in a lot of YA love stories. There’s also underlying themes of art, government, and religion that continue to develop in Crossed and will undoubtedly cultivate further in book three. I know I mentioned in my last review of Matched that I struggled with some of the editing choices at the beginning of the book, so I will say that I found Condie’s writing much more polished in book two, and I barely left an hour’s time before I started the third and final novel in the series, Reached.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for trilogies.