Reached by Ally Condie

*This review will contain spoilers for the first two books in the Matched series*

Well, here we are. The last book in the Matched trilogy. I've been working on this series throughout July, with very mixed results. I thought the first novel, Matched, was entertaining enough. However, I thought the second novel in the series, Crossed, was pretty bad. I don't like to leave things unfinished, and I knew that I had to read the third book. Reached, before the details of the first two slipped out of my head. Luckily for me, one of my last two remaining prompts in The Book Junkie Trials was to "enjoy an indulgent read," so I could use it for this. Young adult fiction, especially dystopian stories, are one of my biggest reading guilty pleasures. While "enjoying" is a strong word for what I feel about this series, it's definitely an indulgent pick for me. I didn't go into this novel completely hopeless though; I figured that it would probably be better than Crossed, since this is the big conclusion to the story. Determined to see it through, I charged up my Kindle and dove in. 

Reached begins shortly after the events of Crossed, after Ky and Cassia make it to The Rising. A little bit of time has gone by, and both characters have been accepted into the rebel movement and given positions in different cities. Ky has been trained as a pilot, and he works to shift supplies around to Rising units as needed. Cassia has been sent to Central, to continue her work as a sorter and sabotage Society work from within.  Their different locations and objectives prevent them from communicating much, and both long to reconnect.

Along with Ky and Cassia, Xander is also working for The Rising. He is posing as a Society medic and works to support the rebellion from within by altering the medications the Society gives to citizens to control them. He was Cassia's original match and close friend, and he still carries a torch for her, even though Cassia has told him a few times that she loves Ky and has chosen him. Xander is hoping that if he can distinguish himself in the movement, that he can win her back.

The narration alternates between the three characters as they work throughout the story to aid the rebellion and reconnect with each other. The Rising is able to seize control of the government right at the start of the novel, but they begin to lose that control almost immediately when a plague sweeps through the population. The Rising has already developed a cure for this plague in secrecy, hoping to win the loyalty of the people by healing them. However, when the illness mutates, their cure is useless and they have to deal with an increasingly angry and scared population. The measures they take to prevent rioting start to look an awful lot like what the Society used to do to control everyone, throwing their carefully laid plans into chaos.

Ky, Cassia, and Xander now have to deal with the threat of infection along with their increasing distrust of The Rising and it's mysterious leader, the Pilot. When the group finally comes back together to help the Pilot deal with the plague, it is immediately clear that their movement for freedom isn't as righteous as they'd thought, and that there are many secrets floating around underneath the surface of their missions. Together, they must work to understand exactly what is happening with the Rising, cure the plague, and achieve the freedom they have been fighting so hard for. 

So, it turned out that I was right. This book was better that Crossed. Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing I can say about it. Whereas Crossed had an issue with a lack of story, Reached has entirely too much. Most of the story is spent on dealing with the plague, and the amount of details included about where it comes from, how it spreads, how immunity works, how the mutation works, why some people catch it but not others, how it attacks the body, how to cure it, how to care for those that have it, how it connects to the Society's tablets, and whose fault it was that it spread in the first place absolutely take over the story.  It's a confusing tangle of information to digest, and Ally Condie knew this, hence the amount of passages that explain and re-explain this information in different ways. So much time is spent on the plague, in fact, that this feels like a novel from a completely different series. All of the mystery about the Society and the Rising are largely cast aside here, in order to focus more on the medical drama that is unfolding. It felt like an odd choice for the direction of the story, and despite all the attention given to it, it still ended up being confusing.

With so much effort being placed on that aspect of the plot, a lot of other elements from the first two books didn't get enough development. The Society and the Rising remained very vague, with little new information revealed about their motivations, strategies, and goals. I was hoping to dive a little deeper into their organization, find out more about how they managed to form and grow, and discover some dark secrets about what was going on behind the scenes. Instead, the Society is allowed to remain a faceless, bland organization with a general mission of controlling everyone. The Rising fares slightly better, with some attention given to it's mysterious leader, the Pilot, but what was there was felt too thin and confusing to be satisfying. I feel like the rules and structure of this society were never clearly enough defined, and it really shows in this final entry. Details are all over the place and it's hard to keep track of how everything comes together.

The narration of this novel also works against it. Instead of two narrators, like in Crossed, we have three. Cassia, Ky, and Xander take turns telling the story, and all three voices are exactly the same. The overly dramatic language I took issue with in the last book is toned down a bit here, but it is definitely still present, and it becomes quite tiresome after a while. On the positive side, however, the characters are separated from each other for much of the novel, so the three perspectives don't end up repeating events that much. This is a clear improvement from Crossed, and I appreciated it.  

There were a few other things to appreciate here too. I enjoyed Condie's use of poetry throughout the text and her focus on the importance of art and creativity in people's lives. I liked Indie's character as well. I thought that she had the most clearly defined personality out of anyone else in the entire series. Oker was a great character as well, even though he wasn't in the story for very long. Despite the issues I had with the amount of time spent on the plague vs. other story elements, I was still interested enough in it to keep on reading until the end, so there's that. It wasn't all bad; it just could have been so much better.

Ultimately, Reached is a mediocre conclusion to a mediocre trilogy. The ideas Condie presented in Matched were intriguing, but the exploration of those ideas throughout the rest of the series was disappointing. Nothing was as exciting, interesting, or clever as I wanted it to be. The plot structure was uneven. The details were confusing. The messages were unclear. I know that in a few weeks, I will have completely forgotten everything that happened in these books. It's rare that I so blatantly dislike a young adult series, but I must be honest, I was let down by these. At least I can say I finished them and I can move on to find something else I will like better now.


Challenge Tally
Book Junkie Trials (Empty Barrel Inn - Enjoy an indulgent read) 16/17
Finally in 2019: 36/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 54