In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.
Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one… until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow — between perfection and passion.
April 12, 2013 (12:23 pm) I am somewhat speechless right now after, literally, just finishing this book. First thing I did was visit my library's website and placed a hold on the next available copy of the following book, Crossed. After that I started writing my review that you can read below... which somehow got deleted grrr!
My Thoughts - A
I can definitely see this series becoming the next Hunger Games with the movie versions and everything. The thing that has always intrigued me about future society type books and movies are the new and imaginative terms the authors invent to use for objects that already have names and functions today. For example:
port = computer scribe = tablet showing = movie foilware = plates and dinnerware artifacts = keepsakes
The only reason I didn't give Matched an "A+" was because it was a little slow in parts. Although, I do understand that the author tries to slow things down so the reader grasps the full effect of the controlling Society on everyday aspects of our lives that we may take for granted. But the pace in addition with the rarely used "first person present" point of view writing style, makes it a little tough to get started, but once you do... The love triangle is also something we've all seen before but along with the setting and plot it has some new situations and emotions.
The characters are so descriptive and vivid that you can imagine speaking with them. The author has an amazing poetic writer that packs the most details into every sentence she can. Cassia has this unbelievable force of thought that just radiates from the pages. The author makes you feel so connected with her that you can't help but want to jump in and save her from this ridiculous place of predetermination and no choices.
One of the most interesting ideas in this novel is the fact that the citizens no longer know how to physically write anymore because they all use the keyboards on their scribes for typing everything all day, everyday. They don't even know what the names of the writing utensils used to be. That's how Cassia and Ky connect because Ky is one of the few people that has retained the ability to write through the generations; he secretly teaches her how to write her name in the beautiful lost art of cursive in the dirt with a stick.
Both of Cassia's love interests are so much alike as they are different. In the beginning of the story you root for one and hate the other, in the middle you can't decide, and toward the end you feel the opposite that you felt at the start. It's the perfectly written love triangle even though I'm sure there will be many debates among the reader as there are with all relationship plots. But without Cassia's love choice where would the next book go?
Cassia Quotes
"The colors are gone, sucked away for by the night."
"I like the place where one part meets another, eyes to cheek, wrist to hands..."
"I feel my heart racing, my pulse pounding clear to my fingertips."
"Her laugh sounds easy and warm, which make a shiver of cold prickle my scalp."
"The acid in my tone surprises me."
"Do not go gentle. I don't know if Ky speaks the words to my mind somehow or I think them to myself or if Grandfather might be out there somewhere in this almost-night, calling words on the wind..."
"I think of how perhaps the way to fly would be with hands full of earth so you would always remember where you came from. and how hard walking can sometimes be."
Crossed
Book Two in the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie
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.
My Thoughts - A
being written
Crossed Quotes
"It's a song, I tell myself, same as I always do. The bass sound of the heavy shots, the soprano of the screams, the tenor of my own fear. All part of the music." -Ky
"Because in the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go." -Ky
"Part of me wants to believe that the flood of death carries us someplace after all. That there's someone to see at the end." -Ky
"When I look over later, I see that he is crying, but it's not enough to drown in, so I don't do anything yet." Ky
"And there is a place where he lives that I think of as home, even though I cannot name it and don't where, exactly, it is." -Cassia
"The evening air holds the bittersweet tang of what might have been." -Cassia
"She does a good job pretending to be broken." -Cassia
"We all stand gathered around at the windows, which have no glass anymore. The wind blows through, its current a river of cold air from window to window." -Cassia
"As I unfold the page carefully it makes small sounds that seem loud, and I hope the other girls will think it is an insect singing its wings." -Cassia
"The air is desert-cold, a sharp, thin cold that tricks you into thinking you aren't thirsty, because breathing is like drinking in ice." -Cassia
"I couldn't find a way to fly to you so I walked every step on this stone." -Cassia
"It takes much longer to climb than it does to fall." -Cassia
"It's a waste of water to cry, I tell myself, but I can't seem to stop. The tears stream down my face, making paths in the dust." -Cassia
"That's how I know it's the Society. In it's perfection I see the cracks." -Cassia
"The salt of his tears tastes like the sea and I don't see the shore." -Cassia
The Third and Final Book in the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie
Cassia’s journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect façade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter. With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose. One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most—family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion.
My Thoughts - B+
As a finale for a brilliant series, Reached was somewhat boring and slow. The conclusion was not very exciting nor satisfying; it felt like the story wasn't finished and that the author had a deadline to keep, so she rushed a satisfactory ending. However, I thoroughly enjoyed how each chapter was narrated by one of the three main characters, giving us different points of view of the same scene. I finished the book last week and I am finding it difficult to recall any particular scenes that stuck with me, unlike the last two books where I couldn't stop thinking about them after I read them. I mean I can remember the novel on a whole and what happened throughout the story, but it feels like "just another book" to me. There weren't any shocking twist, surprises nor reveals, and it seemed quite predictable to me. I enjoyed Reached but for a trilogy conclusion was a little disappointing and did not meet my expectations.
"I did not reach Thee But my feet slip nearer every day Three Rivers and a Hill to cross One Desert and a Sea I shall not count the journey one When I am telling Thee"
"Physic himself must fade. All things to end are made; The plague full swift goes by. I am sick, I must die."
"I, a stone, am rolling, Up the highest hill. You, my love,are calling Through the winter chills. We must keep on going Now and then and still."
Reached Quotes
"I wouldn't care how small the world became as long as I had her at the center of mine." -Ky
"I don't know what happens after we die. It doesn't seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive the what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane." -Ky
"It feels like some new hole has been torn in my heart." -Ky
"It's almost nice to have someone else carrying my body. This damn thing is so heavy lately." - Ky
"You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have." -Ky
"These branches will be my bone, and the paper will be my heart and skin, the places that feel everything. It's a strange feeling, like my bones are walking along with me on the outside of my body." -Cassia
"I wanted his hands at my back and his lips speaking poems on mine and out journey to each other to be completed, the miles between us consumed and all distance closed." -Cassia
"I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could write in paper people and I would love them too; I could make the almost real. And in a story, you can turn to the front page and begin again and everyone lives once more. But that doesn't work in real life; and I love my real people the most." -Cassia
"You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all." -Cassia
"In his eyes is such complete love and hunger that it goes through me like a sharp, high note echoing all the way through my body." -Cassia
"I draw in a ragged breath, the kind you take when the pain is too deep to cry, when you can't cry because all you are is pain, and if you let some of it escape, you might cease to exist." -Cassia
"Writing, painting, singing--cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of 'waiting' a place where you can linger without much fear. For we are all walking each other to out deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives." -Cassia
"'I am dying,' the patient tells me. He opens his eyes, 'It's not very hard...'" -Xander
"A little surge of bitterness goes through me like someone's shot it right into my veins with a syringe." -Xander
"I used to pride myself on how fast we got patients into recovery. Now my satisfaction comes from keeping as many of them here as long as possible because these days, if a patient leaves, it means they've died." -Xander
"I'm not who she wants. I've seen someone look at me this way before. Not through me, exactly, but beyond to someone else." -Xander
"When we fall in love for the first time, we don't know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again." -Xander
Ally Condie
Ally Condie received a degree in English Teaching from Brigham Young University and spent a number of years teaching high school English in Utah and in upstate New York. She lives with her husband and three sons outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.