Matched by Ally Condie

 

Warning: This review may contain some spoilers to the book.

Imagine living in a world where everything is decided for you. Some of these life changing decisions involve when you learn how to read, write, take on responsibility, obtain a vocation, who you marry, and when you die. To decide these life changing decisions, this society would use data and percentages from your previous actions to calculate the possibilities of future actions. As a result of this society being very calculated, it would strive to have equality. For example, if someone had a special object, but a friend didn’t, the officials would take all the special items away, because it fostered inequality. Imagine living in this controlling society where everything was neutral and predicted based on previous actions that were compiled in data.

Matched is a dystopian novel, written by Ally Condie, about a teenage girl named Cassia living in a community as described above. Cassia, along with many others, looked forward to her Matching Banquet which was when she would be assigned to her perfect match, Xander. She had no doubt that Xander, a childhood friend, was her ideal mate. However, when she got home to look at Xander's information on a tablet the officials provided to her, a different face appeared on the screen and then the screen went black. Cassia was shocked because the face that appeared was another childhood friend that she knew, Ky. She was now stuck in a choice between two matches that ultimately became a choice between perfection or passion.

My Review on Matched

Overall, I thought this book was very predictable and had a slow plot. The plot was not entirely foreign to me because I have read many basic romance novels where this situation was presented, and the main character usually chooses passion over perfection. As a result, I found many of the main character's actions predictable and obvious. Another problem I encountered was it didn't have a monumental climax. This could be a result of the author's writing style; however, I felt that the events leading up to the climax were slow and, when I realized that the climax had started, I had already lost interest in the story. Although, I enjoyed the dystopian aspects of the novel, at times I felt that the author included too many dystopian aspects which became annoying. Some of the dystopian aspects in the book were a red, blue, and green pill that have unordinary affects, only keeping a record of 100 poems from history before the society began, having futuristic technology that made life easier on individuals, and constant surveillance of the society. In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend this book to people unless they like an uneventful reading book and are willing to read a slow plot.