Book review: Reached

Reached by Ally Condie

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Linking up with Blonde... Undercover Blonde for Book Club Friday. Because this book is the third in a series, it will automatically contain spoilers for the first two books, which can be found here and here.

After leaving Society and desperately searching for 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 has been assigned to work for the Rising from within Society, while Ky has been stationed outside its borders. But nothing is as predicted, and all too soon the veil lifts and things shift once again.

In this gripping conclusion to the #1 New York Times-bestselling Matched trilogy, Cassia will reconcile the difficulties of challenging a life too confining, seeking a freedom she never dreamed possible, and honoring a love she cannot live without.

I gave all three books in this series a three-star rating. Whoops? It's hard to review the third book in a series, especially when I haven't reviewed the other two books on my blog. 

The Matched trilogy is about Cassia, a girl who lives in a future society that controls citizens lives very much, from their jobs to whom they marry to how many children they can have. Typical dystopian. The first book, Matched, kicks off when Cassia is matched to be married to her lifelong bff Xander. But through a technological glitch, Cassia gets a glimpse at a different future the Society never had planned for her. And she starts to wonder, what if she pursues that alternate future?

All in all, I was pretty satisfied with Reached as a conclusion to the series. While the first book is told only from Cassia's perspective, the second adds in Ky's perspective, and the third has Cassia's, Ky's and Xander's perspectives. I usually don't like alternating perspectives because they don't allow you to get to know any of the characters really well -- but, since we had the whole series to get to know these characters, I felt like it really worked.

A common problem, I think, with series-ending books is that the author tries to wrap everything up, give everyone a happy ending, and tie a nice bow around it all. On the one hand, I want some of that. I don't want to see characters I have grown to love unhappy or, worse, dead. 

But on the other hand, I sometimes hate it. It's not realistic and feels false. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Reached strikes a really great balance of happy endings and leaving some things undecided. The end feels realistic, but there are still some loose ends, some less-than-perfect futures that are still possible. And I like that.

I liked the series a lot and definitely recommend it to readers who like a bit of romance and adventure. :)

Have any of you read all or part of this series? What did you think? (Please be wary of spoilers but feel free to email me! :)