Reached
I was always a fan of this series. Sure, it look me over a year after this book was released to read it but I was always excited about finally finishing this series. I read Matched soon after it was released, the same as Crossed but four years later I don't think I have the same feelings towards Matched as I did back then. I rated both Matched and Crossed 5/5, one of my highest ratings for a series. However, I was let down by Reached.Reached starts a couple of months were we left Crossed, I think. Xander is an official, Ky is piloting flying ships and Cassia is doing what she does best. Sorting out data. I felt confused about what Cassia's role was in this. She does help a lot later in the book but for at least 70% it seemed like she was almost not needed she just moped around and thought about Ky whilst sending messages to everyone. I can;t imagine if she got hold of a mobile phone. We'd never hear the end of it. So, Ky is flying the ships, getting the cure out for this new plague (I'll get onto that) and Xander is actually administering it and helping the patients. So what is Cassia doing? Opening an art gallery. Called... The Gallery. The concept sounds so ridiculous to me.
The Plague... or as I prefer to call it, how big can we make this plot hole. We have a Plague that the Society cannot possibly cure... but the Rising can? And then the Society disappears. I mean, no war or anything like that, it was all about the Plague. I don't remember meeting a single Official that was for the Society during most of the book, they just vanished like they never existed. There was no fight against The Rising. This plot hole and lack of actual war was attempted to be sewn over further into the book but I felt it just made the hole bigger.
This book was also really, really, slow. 500 pages of people thinking and not a lot of doing. Up to about 50% of the book it was split into parts as well as chapters in which no time passed between the parts and they just seemed so unneeded. I have a note in my Kindle app that says that the first time it made sense to have a part was Part 5, and after that I don't actually remember seeing any more Parts. It was just really confusing.
The Pilot idea just drove me crazy because they had one set Pilot ad then everyone else's personal Pilots and it just got pretty silly in the end. Especially after such a big thing was made about The Pilot in the previous books, I was let down by that a lot. The ending was just okay. Society was getting rebuilt, a few strings left untied, everyone's in love, you get the idea. I guess it just wasn't the ending I was expecting and I think I would have enjoyed it more as a whole had it not felt so slow.