Matched

This post first published August 22, 2012.

Author: Ally Condie
Series: Matched #1
First Published: November 2010
Publisher: Penguin Group
238 pages (eBook)
 
I was initially attracted to this book because I heard it was a dystopia, and also the covers (for this one and its sequels) are so interesting and lovely. I’m a little disappointed in the book, but I am still somewhat curious as to how it’s all going to go down in the end, so I think I’ll continue onto book two.

Matched takes place in a world where everything is strictly controlled and regulated by the government. They pick where you work, they pick who you marry, they pick your food for you, they pick your clothes for you, everything. Our main character is Cassia, a cheerful 17 year old girl about to become Matched. The government runs all the 17 year olds’ data and match them to their perfect partner, and they are very good at this. Essentially, the government knows who your soul mate is. Cassia is very lucky and gets Matched to her childhood best friend, Xander.

Cassia has never questioned the way Society is before, but when the microchip containing her Match’s information glitches and she sees the photo of another boy on her screen, she wonders how her perfect Society could have made a mistake. Even stranger, she recognizes the glitched boy as a boy in her neighbourhood named Ky. All this gets Cassia to start questioning her Society and wondering if it was possible that she and Ky are the real Match and not her and Xander.

I was super interested in the idea that the government picks who you marry, which is the premise of this novel. I liked the way this book began and it really sucked me in at first. However, shortly after, the book went in a direction that I wasn’t too crazy about. The whole being matched thing kind of faded to the background. It was really just a springboard to help Cassia start questioning her supposedly perfect society. She realizes that everyone is so controlled, no one gets to have a say about anything. No one can make any of their own choices. Then she gets closer to Ky, and she realizes she wants to be able to choose between Xander and Ky. All that wasn’t bad, it’s just that it was presented in a rather dull way. I admit, I kind of got bored reading this book.

I don’t think this was a particularly well built story world, although it does have loads of potential. I heard it was very similar to The Giver by Lois Lowry, although I haven’t read that book so I can’t say much about it. Anyway, some parts of it feel perfectly dystopian-ish and then some parts were just bizarre or confusing. For example, how is it possible that everyone knows how to type, but nobody knows how to write the actual alphabet? It’s the same symbols, I can’t imagine it being that far of a leap to copy something from the screen to paper. I mean, if I knew how to read Russian on my computer, for example, I’m sure some of the letters would have stuck in my mind. Also, Ky is labeled as an Aberration, which supposedly makes him an imperfect match for Cassia, but what is an Aberration exactly? It is not explained in the book. All I know is that aberration means ‘something that deviates from the norm’, and that doesn’t tell me a whole lot about Ky.

The love triangle relationship between Cassia and the two boys was a bit lackluster as well, although at the very end, I did really like the idea of Cassia and Ky being together and I was really sad when they got separated. I don’t know when it happened, but I really started to root for them and their separation scene was a little touching (though bordering on cheesiness a bit, heh). Anyway, I understand Cassia and Xander’s relationship. They are a very standard boy-meets-girl next door kind of couple who are both absolutely perfect and good. I am not quite sure how Cassia started to fall in love with Ky so hard (although, like I said, I like them together regardless). Cassia doesn’t even really know Ky until his face popped up on her glitched microchip, then suddenly she’s super interested in him and falls madly in love with him. Which is doubly weird because Ky is a strong and silent kind of guy, broods a lot, so I don’t know what he did to become attractive in her eyes if she never even noticed him in the first place, and he’s lived on the same street as her for years. I suppose it just drives to home the idea that Society knows who your perfect soulmates are.

In the end, I thought this book was okay. It didn’t amaze me, but it didn’t feel like a chore to finish either. It’s also a rather short book (well, short compared to what I usually read), so it didn’t take me ages to finish or something; I was just interested enough to read it all in one day, four hours. As I said at the beginning of this post, I am interested to see how the story will continue so I think I will give the second book a shot. I do hope the second book and I click better!

My Rating: 2/5