Matched

Love triangle. Yep - that's the premise for Cassia Reyes in Matched by Ally Condie. But, before you think "not another teen drama" give Matched a chance. I read the book in three days, could not put it down. A love triangle exists, because we all know that love is a fundamental emotion coursing through teenage veins (and ours, to be honest), but it's different for Cassia and for Xander and Ky - her double matches; there's more at stake than just a broken heart.


The Society, the world in which they live, has created perfection. Couples are genetically matched by genes, DNA, and the potential for perfect offspring (as a teacher in public education, I can say this does NOT sound like a bad system). This happens on or shortly thereafter their seventeenth birthday. In short, The Society plays Cupid. And while some parties are destined to be singles for the rest of their life, those that are the best are matched with the best. Your match most likely will come from another province outside the one you live in, but for Cassia, that's where the surprise begins.

***Side note: Now, if you're a word nerd like I am, the idea that the outlying areas are called provinces immediately sparked your musings of war. Province comes from the Latin word Provincia, meaning territory under domination (pro -before, vincere - to conquer). So, as I started reading more about Cassia's love matches, it didn't surprise me that one of them came from a war-torn province with plenty of sultry mystery.

Her match night goes as planned, with one little twist. Her perfect match is right in the room with her; her best friend Xander. While this is rare, most people meet their match on a screen before them, neither are upset by the match, in fact, Xander was hopeful all along. But, the mystery begins when Cassisa gets home to read her micro-card about Xander. This is a chip containing all information about your future betrothed. Cassia doesn't really see the point in reading hers because she's known Xander her entire life, but curiosity gets the better of her and she pops her card into the reader. Xander's face is there for only a moment and then it's somebody else - somebody she never thought would be a match for her, Ky Markham.

The Society doesn't make mistakes. This could not possibly be happening. Why hasn't she ever looked at Ky this way before? What are the odds that he's now a part of everything that she does? Is The Society playing tricks with her? Or is this who she's really supposed to love? Does she have a choice in a world where everything is chosen for her: who to be, who to love, where to work, and when to die? Choice...choice...choice - Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage, against the dying of the light...

Matched is a well-written novel at 400 pages, and I found it to be an easy read with excellent flow to the story. Condie's descriptive language is right on cue; not too much that you are drowning in it, and just enough to give you an adequate picture of the life inside The Society. Lucky for readers, Matched is part of a trilogy, and the second book Crossed is in bookstores now.

Ally Condie (www.allycondie.com) is a former high school English teacher who lives with her husband and three sons outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. She loves reading, running, eating, and listening to her husband play guitar. SERIOUSLY - CAN SHE SOUND ANYMORE LIKE ME??? (except I like watching my husband work on his car and listening to him play the drums)

For more information about Matched and the author, visit the book's website. In the YA world, I would give this book a definite "two thumbs up" - it's enough science fiction/fantasy to keep a reader turning the page, with just enough reality to make one wonder, "What would I do???"

A lot of people came to this book with preconceived ideas. Which is usually a bad way to start a book. I'm grateful I came to it without having read a single review, and only barely having skimmed the book blurb. It stood on its own, and on its own it was beautiful. The transition Cassia makes from contented subject to rebel is gradual and believable. Nothing seems hidden at the beginning, but the unravelling details that damn the dystopia are just the right kind of insidious for us to rebel right along with her. It's an homage to every dystopian novel before it, while remaining a simple, precious, and endearing romance. I am usually upset/annoyed by love triangles, as they're generally overused, unnecessary, and not particularly romantic (seriously, there's really nothing romantic about hurting two perfectly decent young men over love). This is unfortunately not an exception, as Xander and Ky, who both could have used better names, both lacked flaws of any kind (other than their names) to nudge our preferences in a particular direction. The result is a love story tainted by a tertiary character destined for disappointment. However, Cassia's parents were wonderful - it's always refreshing when a character doesn't need dead parents to have her own story - and her brother was darling. The book ends at just the right moment for transition to book two - much like Delirium, in fact. I appreciate any book that uses poetry as unawkwardly as Matched manages to (Lies Beneath, by Anne Greenwood Brown, is another). I can only hope we'll have a new generation of readers buying volumes of Tennyson and Dylan Thomas.

If you love the Hunger Games then you love this book.I want to read the sequel Crossed.

Very dissapointed. I expected a lot more. The world and characters were so well written but the story line fizzled out.

This book was... a huge disappointment for me. I was really hyped about it cause of the summary and the cover. It sounds a LOT better than it is. The whole pace of the book was really slow. Nothing exciting happened. A lot of the parts sounded stolen from the Hunger games. (The train in the begining, the different *even though it wasn't called this* districts.) I think if somebody else wrote this, the book would have been a lot better.

I know. Sorta harsh. I usually don't write bad reviews, but the book wasn't that good.

Although this story was very interesting at some points it also got dull very fast and at random points in the story.

I fell in love with this book after the first chapter.The plot was just so amazing and you never knew what would happen next.The poems made the book so much more personal.I became more alive whole reading this.The love triangle was the best part and through the whole book I was thinking 'Would I have made the same choice?'.Amazing book by an amazing author.

Oh, dear. This did not go down well. If it hadn't been for the relationship between Ky and Cassia, I wouldn't have read it to the end. It did nothing for me. It dragged on at times, which made me bored. It's the end of the road with this one for me.

Unique, fun, and an interesting take on dystopian.

I can understand why people like this. I really can. But the fact is that I am tired of love triangles, I am tired of books where every single little thing goes wrong, and I am tired of narrators that make me angry to no end.

And I also want to say that I'm biased against this book and always have been, because of the love triangle. I've gotten to the point where it doesn't matter how good the love triangle is written - I hate it. I'm tired of seeing some form of a love triangle in practically every single book. Sorry, but how many girls do you know that have two guys in love with them? Not enough to fill all these books, that's for sure.

And no, I don't just hate love triangles because they're overused. I have other reasons that would take up way too much of this post. Maybe another post can be full of my rant ;D

Anyway, I can't say that Matched was a terrible book. It wasn't. Cassia was a rational character who didn't do stupid things very often. But I just had too many problems with it to enjoy it, the love triangle being only one of them. I thought it was interesting, how she saw Xander's face and then Ky's flashed, but I couldn't help but wonder how the Society could have let that happen. If they've been doing it for awhile, kinks should be worked out, yeah? >_>


(I want to also admit that I skimmed a lot of parts in this book. I'm easily bored.)


And here I'm going to do the unspeakable. I'm going to compare Matched to another book O_O Don't hate me. Please. And please don't hate me when I say I'm going to compare it to The Hunger Games. I promise that it's not just because they're both dystopians.


There was a lot of things in Matched that reminded me of THG, but there was especially one line, when Cassia was with Xander towards the end of the book. She was thinking about how she could be in that one moment without the Society watching, and the line was honestly practically the same line as in one of The Hunger Games novels, except, y'know, with "Capitol" instead of "Society."


My biggest problem, though, was Cassia herself. Say what you want about Katniss being a cold-hearted bitch, (I can't argue with that) but at least Katniss was brave. She did practically everything she could to defy the Capitol. To me, Cassia was weak. By the end of the book, she pretty much hates the Society. She doesn't like them very much in the middle, either. But what does she do about it? Not very much. I feel like all she really did to defy the Society was fall in love with Ky.


Another problem I had was that I felt like too much of the book was about romance. I would have liked to see more plot involving other things. Because in the end, pretty much every little thing still came back to Xander or Ky.


AND THE MISTAKES. I mean, the book wasn't littered with them, but there were still too many for a published book. I mean, one mistake is too many for a published book, if you ask me, but >_>


Overall: Okay, yeah, this was barely a review. It was really just a rant of how much I hated the book. But I'll be honest - even if the idea wasn't original, some of the things Condie did with it were nice twists. So instead of one star, it gets two :P (And the cover is really, really awesome.)