Book Review: Matched- Ally Condie

Title: Matched
Authors: Ally Condie
Publication Date: November 30th 2010
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
Pages: 369
Link to Goodreads: Here
Part of a Series: Book 1 of the Matched

Plot: In the Society, officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic.

Reading period: 

Review

I was curious to read this series for personal reasons. 

The idea of a society controlling everything and everyone reminded me a lot of the Giver and I loved that book  so I also wanted to compare the two books. There are some similarities, but also some differences.

The Society, authoritarian officials, control everything: what a person should eat, what job they should do, how many hours of free time they can have, who they should date and marry, and when they should die.

I knew a great part of the book would deal with the romance aspect of the society ( it is called Matched), so we follow the life of Cassia. She goes through her Matching- ceremony and she is paired with her best friend Xander, but ops… when she reads the file she sees the picture of another boy, Ky. The officials tell her that it was a mistake, but was it?

Now Cassia is conflicted about her feelings. She likes Xander because they have been friends since small kids but she is falling in love with Ky, someone she can’t be with and who 

Unfortunately this book was a bit slow. There aren’t a lot of twists, change of pace or surprises. Also there are some gaps on the description of the setting. We don’t know a lot about the Society, who is in power or why they got into power. We know there’s a war at the border, but not who they are fighting against. 

We know that only 100 songs, films, books have been kept from the past and approved from the Society and there’s a group that is smuggling other things, but that wasn’t really explored.

I’ll probably going to continue the series, mostly to find out if some of my questions will be answered.  

RATING