Crossed by Ally Condie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well. That wasn't good.
The biggest problem with Crossed is that it's extremely dull. The greatest strength of the first book, Matched, was the Society the characters lived in. This book takes the characters out of Society and puts them in a canyon, where they wander back and forth to no clear purpose.
If the characters were particularly vibrant or intriguing, this might still work. But as it turns out, when separated from the interesting concepts of their world, the characters are dull and generic. Also, half of the chapters are from the perspective of the female lead, and half from that of the male lead, but the voice they're written in is identical. I could only tell who was narrating from the headers and context clues. Say what you will about Stephenie Meyer (and heaven knows I have), but the chapters written from Jacob's perspective sound like a different person. (Oh, and either I had stopped paying attention, or the little interpersonal dramas made no sense. "You know that story you told about your mother and also it happened in a book or something? Well, I have deduced it was really about YOU!" Seriously, does anybody know what that was about?)
I liked the first one, and I still intend to read the third one when it comes out. The optimistic interpretation of how bad this one was is that Condie only had enough material for two books, but decided she needed to stretch the gap between points A and B because her publisher wanted a trilogy. The pessimistic interpretation is that once she ran out of plot to crib from The Giver, she was out of ideas. I'm hoping it's the first option, but we'll find out.
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