It’s about time I got around to reading Crossed. I’ve been wanting to read this book since I first finished Matched but for some reason I kept putting it off. While Crossed was not quite as enthralling as Matched, I’m happy to say that I enjoyed it.

Crossed starts off shortly after the final events of Matched. I admit that I read Matched a while ago. I didn’t remember exactly what happened but I remembered enough that I could muddle through things. There were a few points where I was a little confused but lucky for me, those points were clarified. As for the rest of the story, while it was a little slow, it did a good job of showing what things were like outside of the Society. The Rising started to take shape in this book and many new questions were posed about what the Society was really up to. While there wasn’t much action to this book, there was enough new information for me to be intrigued and I never once thought about putting it down.

The romance seemed very toned down from the first book. It seemed like Matched spent a good portion of the book setting up the romance between Cassia and Ky. That wasn’t the case with Crossed. There were some mixed signals in the beginning when I thought Crossed would be Cassia and Xander’s book but that was definitely not the case. The romance between Cassia and Ky is still strong but it took a backseat to everything else going on with them. New characters were introduced as well as new dangers. Crossed also was more about Ky’s past than anything. He’s not nearly as big a mystery as he was in Matched.

Cassia was a little disappointing to me in Crossed. She was brave, smart, resourceful, and all I could want in a heroine but she just didn’t seem special in any way. She was exactly like all the other dystopian/fantasy/paranormal heroines out there. I wanted her to stand out to me and she didn’t. I’m not saying I didn’t like I her (because I did), I just really wanted more from her. Ky was more interesting to me than Cassia was. He was a very troubled character, both because of his past and his present. I felt for him and I really wanted to see him happy because it was clear, no matter what he did, he was a good guy. And yes there is some Xander in Crossed but not much. Honestly, I like Ky better just because I know him better than Xander. I have no issues with either boy. I think they are both great guys but at this point in time I am 100% Team Ky.

Overall, Crossed does a great job setting things up for the final book in the trilogy. It narrowly avoided the second book syndrome but in the end I was pleased with it. Things are relatively wrapped up at the end, it’s not a cliffhanger, and readers won’t mind the wait for the final book too much.