Cassia’s journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect façade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter.

The wait is over.

One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most—family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion.

With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the international–bestselling Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose.

Much earlier this year I wrote reviews for the first two books in this series, Matched and Crossed where I admitted to liking the books more than I originally thought I would. I had high hopes for the concluding installment, figuring that Ally Condie would wrap the story up with some great action, interesting twists, and solid character development.

Imagine my surprise when Reached turned out to be none of those things.

Yes, the story of Cassia, Ky, and Xander gets wrapped up in a pretty little package at the end where most of them get what they are searching for after helping the Rising complete its power grab, or if not exactly what they want, an acceptable alternative, but along the way to that end result the book is incredibly flat and lacking in excitement or drive in my opinion.

As characters, especially leading characters, Cassia and Ky fell completely by the wayside. Cassia never changed from the beginning of the book to the end, she just kept doing the same thing over and over, never really learning anything from what was going on around her. Ky was the same way. As a pilot for the Rising he did his duty as he was given assignments but we never got to see him grow in an appreciable manner. I felt that both of them were incredibly boring which made reading their respective viewpoint chapters a bit of a challenge.

Xander on the other hand, is the one shining piece of Reached as he works to help not only the Rising in his role as medical spy, but also to help the general public of the Society as well. I wound up liking Xander as a character far more than anyone else in the trilogy by the time I was finished reading Reached. He showed growth, compassion, a hint of jealousy, acceptance of his fate, etc. The other two just got what they wanted and didn’t even seem to realize it.

I had high hopes for this book, I wanted a stellar ending to the story, but after easily being able to pick sides in the first two books I found I had a hard time seeing either the Rising or the Society as the villains or heroes of the people. Both seemed to have decent intentions, but really messed up putting them into action. As a result, I wasn’t really sure if I should be happy or not when I was finished.

For fans of the first two books, you should probably read Reached just to make sure you get the complete story, and some of you may even enjoy it quite a bit more than I did, but in the end it isn’t nearly as good a book as Matched or Crossed were; it almost seems as if it were forced in some ways.

Grade: D
Length: 384 pages

Amazon   |   Barnes & Noble   |   Goodreads