I've read a lot of bad YA novels, I've read poorly written ones, ridiculously trite and stereotypical ones, just plain unimaginative ones, ones that devolved into a mess of ideas that never got sorted out into a story...but oddly enough, I haven't read that many YA novels that were just unbelievably boring. 
 Matched was okay, I read it right around its debut and thought it was not too bad. Crossed was a little painful to get through (which is surprising considering how many terrible books I still get through pretty quickly) and to be honest, I forgot most of it right after I read it. On a side note, I've always felt like authors who just capitalize common words as rather unimaginative. The Pilot, the Society, the Rising, blah blah blah yawn. 
 I already had low expectations for Matched, which is why I didn't bother checking it out from the library even though every single time, I found it still sitting on the shelf. (In retrospect, that probably should've given me a clue.) Still, I found myself trying to skip paragraphs, then pages, then skimming through entire chapters because I almost never, ever DNF and I felt some obligation to see this through. I struggled MORE to finish reading this thing than reading incredibly dense, boring law books, four years' worth of English and International Relations readings, and entire textbooks like Porth's Essentials of Pathophysiology. This is almost mindboggling but I really can't explain this book's effect on me. It's like I can almost feel it shutting down my mind.