Name: Crossed
Author: Ally Condie
ISBN: 9782070634408

<h2>Overview</h2> Crossed picks up where Ally Condie's Matched left off, following seventeen-year-old Cassia as she abandons the only life she has known to search for Ky in the unmapped territory beyond Society's reach. The decision costs her the safety and certainty that have structured her entire existence, and the novel tracks what she is willing to risk, and lose, to find him. Told through alternating perspectives, the book widens its view of the world Condie introduced in the first installment. As Cassia moves deeper into the Outer Provinces, she encounters people and circumstances that complicate everything Society trained her to believe, and the rebellion hinted at earlier in the series begins to take shape as something real rather than rumored. The middle volume of a trilogy, Crossed functions as both a continuation of a romance interrupted by circumstance and a slower unraveling of the control Society exerts over its citizens, setting up the larger confrontation to come in the series' conclusion. <h2>A Dystopia Built on Control and Choice</h2> Condie's trilogy belongs to a wave of young adult dystopian fiction that emerged in the years following The Hunger Games, and Crossed is where the series' critique of its controlled society sharpens. Where Matched established the mechanics of a world in which choices as personal as a spouse or a career are assigned rather than chosen, Crossed moves its characters physically outside that system, letting the story test what remains of a person once the structures that defined them fall away. The novel's interest in surveillance, conformity, and the cost of stepping outside sanctioned paths places it alongside other genre entries that use speculative premises to examine real adolescent anxieties about autonomy and self-definition. Its alternating narration also reflects a broader trend in YA dystopia toward giving voice to multiple characters navigating the same oppressive system from different vantage points, rather than relying on a single perspective to carry the critique. <h2>Why Crossed Has Been Challenged</h2> Much of the scrutiny directed at Crossed centers on its central romantic relationship and the physical and emotional intimacy between its teenage characters as they reunite under dangerous circumstances. Some readers have objected to the frankness with which the novel handles budding sexuality and attraction between minors, arguing that the content is more mature than appropriate for the middle-grade and early teen readers who gravitate toward the series. The novel's depiction of a society that strips away individual agency, including control over relationships and reproduction, has also drawn concern from those who read its implications as unsuitable for younger audiences, even though the book presents that control as the dystopia's central wrong rather than something to be emulated. Additional objections have pointed to moments of peril and violence as characters navigate an unregulated wilderness and the threat of Society's retaliation. In the catalog tracked here, Crossed has been the subject of challenges in 1 state and 1 school district.

Where to Buy

Affiliate links may generate a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support this site.

Banned in Schools

Banned or challenged in 1 state across 1 school district.

Tennessee 1 district

Monroe County Schools Banned