Review : Reached by Ally Condie

Posted by on May 17, 2013 2:40 am in 3 stars reads | 3 comments

reachedReached by Ally Condie
Pages : 512
Genre : YA
Series : Matched, book 2
My Rating : 3/5

From Goodreads :

After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again.

My Thoughts :

I’ll admit; I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Reached, after being so bored with Crossed. I’m still glad the series is ending here though, but it was a fun ride for that short while.

Last books in a trilogy are difficult to comment on without revealing too much about the book itself, but also about the previous ones. In this case particularly, I feel that I am mostly repeating myself from my reviews of Matched and Crossed: I’m still not a fan of Ky, Cassia still does nothing special for me (good or bad), I still sort of like Xander. So there is really nothing new for me to say about the characters or the author’s writing.

The narration in this book was split between the three main characters and, surprisingly, I actually liked that. While I felt the the voices in Crossed were indistinguishable, here I loved hearing their three different stories (well, not so much Ky, but whatever). It’s not that they had three very distinctive voices, but they had different lives, which helped keeping my interest up a little.

What surprised me most though, was how passive this book felt. Maybe I was spoiled by all the wonderful, constant action of Insurgent and Prodigy, but I kept turning the pages waiting for something big to happen, and it didn’t, really. Well, their lives certainly changed, but their was no “OMG” moment for me as a reader.

I loved the new characters though, and loved to have Cassia back in the city. I truly enjoy the worldbuilding in the series, which is a bit more complex and developed than in some other YA dystopian series I got to read. And I liked how it ended for Xander, mostly.

In the end, for me the series concluded the same way it began; entertaining, light, interesting worldbuilding.

In other words : it was okay.

And now I’m on to something (hopefully) better!

Series Reading Order : 

  1. Matched
  2. Crossed
  3. Reached

3 Comments

  1. I know what you mean about it being “okay”. I gave Matched 4 stars when I first read it, but it is one of those books that got worse as I thought about it. It was just a bit… white bread-y. Still, for the sake of continuity, I guess I should finish the series!

    • I have to say, I experienced this with the books too; when I finish I am super excited, but the more I think about them, the more I’m like “meh”. If you do continue reading them, I do hope you enjoy them!

  2. I’m glad you liked Reached more than Crossed. Crossed was such a struggle for me to get through that I still haven’t read Reached. And I agree with you – I like the fast-pace of the Prodigy series much better.
    I hate to leave a series hanging so maybe I’ll give this one a listen/read sometime to get some closure.

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