Last weekend, Cass and I read Ally Condie's Crossed, a sequel to Matched, and my worst fears came true. . . Ally Condie is a Stephanie Meyers. Okay, that was rude. She's not that bad. But my fears of Crossed turning into more of a Twilight than a Hunger Games came true for sure.
Problems:1. The novel lacks voice -- esp because I read this in-between/at the same time as The Help and Sing You Home [reviews coming soon!] which were also told from different perspectives and done much better.
2. Condie says "says" too much. I know she doesn't want to be all "he exclaimed" & "she gasped" all over the page-- but just cut it out. Just dialogue it. "Blah." Enter. Indent. "Talk-ity-talk." Enter. Indent. Carry on. In all fairness, I may have noticed this one more because I was reading it aloud to Cass. I didn't notice it as much while reading silently.
3. I'm not sure any of my questions were even answered, other than Ky's back-story. But I guess that's why there is a third book . . .
4. I still do not like Ky. He still just creeps me out.
Overall, meh. I'll still read the third when it comes out, but it's just not my type of book. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about guilty pleasure teen books. This one just isn't for me. I think I'll go read The Giver now.
Slated as a cross between Twilight and Hunger Games, I was surprised when Cass brought this home from the library. He read Matched first, said it was clear that Ally Condie is from Utah, and it was reminiscent of The Giver and, despite similarities, he liked it better than Twilight. So I read it. It does start out very Giver-esque, with the banquets and the ceremonies. In this society they have the ability to predict everything. They predict who will be your best match. How you will react in a given situation. The figure out what your caloric intake should be and provide appropriate meals. They assign your job, tell you where to live. Tell you when to have children, when to stop having children. And when to die. They have exacted what makes the optimal life and are providing it for their society. Yet there is a mix up at the Matching, and Cassia has been given two matches -- one a mistake, he's an aberration and disallowed to be matched, Ky, and one a childhood friend, a best friend, Xander. See the Twilight similarities? Guess which boy she chooses?? And of course, I like the other one. So that bothered me. I liked parts of it. I like the idea even though it's not super original. She's also been signed by Disney I guess. She's definitely writing to her target audience -- Twilight -- and it's a little predictable, but I just can't get over the boy problem. I think Ky is a creeper. But there are a lot of occasions where I find boys to be creepers in media and I'm the only one. Overall, I did like this book. And I will read the next one, I'm sure, when Cass brings it home from the library in a month or two. And maybe I won't hate the ending. Hopefully it solves some of the mysteries Condie has laid out for us in the first book and doesn't turn into a ridiculous teenage love story with the cover of having more to it. Because this book, the series I'm sure, is ultimately about free will, agency, the power to choose. It's much deeper than Twilight, and I really hope Condie doesn't sell out just for numbers. Quality over Quantity, right? Please?
