Sigh. I really, really liked the first book in this series called Matched, which is why my shoulders are slightly slumped while writing this review. I can officially place myself off the boat of those who enjoy end of the world, dystopian, apocalyptic books. Matched was my kind of book because it slowly set the stage in gentle terms that perhaps things in Cassia's perfect society were not as they seemed. Crossed began with our characters slugging dead bodies into the water - teenage dead bodies, pre-teen dead bodies, dead bodies here, dead bodies there, bang! bang! dead bodies everywhere...
I’ve often found how much a story resonates with us leans heavily on where we are in our heads or our lives at the time we begin page 1. There is a flood of apocalyptic writing in the YA market right now – especially since the success of Hunger Games and the subsequent movie. When this book fell into my reading pile, I had just come from a string of disappointing reads – Insurgent – which I was too tired to battle alongside the main character in, and the hotly debated Fifty Shades of Gray and when the blush...
BOOK ONE: MATCHED SERIES. Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate . . . until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander.