Matched (ARC Review)

Matched by Ally Condie

Coming November 2010

Synopsis:
In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely 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.

Review:
Incredible!

I think it is amazing how a book can come into your life at just the right time. Something happens, something that makes you question Why; something that makes you feel alone or hopeless or angry. Then as if a greater power is trying to give you some answers or provide you with comfort, the words you need appear. Has that ever happened to you?

It happens to me, periodically.

It happened to me when I received Matched this week, an ARC from Book It Forward. The same week that the book loving community is Speaking Out about how unacceptable it is to ban books.

By now you have probably heard a lot of hype about Matched. I mean Disney is trying to make it into a movie and the book hasn’t even been released yet (source). Well, believe me when I say the hype is very well deserved. This story is AMAZING!

Cassia Maria Reyes lives in a perfect society, one in which everyone has the perfect life because they have been matched with the best mate and the best job for them. When it is Cassia’s turn to be matched, she is very excited about it. She has never questioned the rules of the Officials before. She believes the Society runs a system without flaws, without errors.

But then an error does occur. Suddenly, Cassia finds herself questioning the decisions the Society makes for her because now her perfect Match may not be so perfect after all. Now she wants to make her own decisions, but can she?

There were a lot of tender moments in this story that made me cry. While I was happy to be with Cassia through her journey, to see her transform from naive and innocently trusting, to daring and challenging, it was emotional. Many scenes in the book saddened me, like when the Society scheduled a death or when they took away artifacts that meant something special to the people of the community.

It disguised me to learn that in Cassia’s world, the Society decided that culture was too cluttered, so they choose only a hundred of everything: poems, books, history lessons, paintings, and songs. The rest, the stories and history lessons might cause people to rebel against the Society, were destroyed. Other parts angered me, like when the Society burned books or when they made predictions about the way people were likely to react then reveled because their predictions where correct. Yet, the whole of the story was wonderfully thought provoking.

Cassia’s love interest, Ky, was hard to know. He didn’t reveal a lot about himself. He was very guarded. But when he did start to open up, he was such an interesting and intense character. Even though the Society deemed him unfit to be matched, he dared to love on his own terms. He provided hope. I loved the way he secretly challenged society all along, in his own quiet way. I loved the way he taught Cassia to believe in herself; he helped her uncover her strengths and see the truth.

Alarming yet authentic, Matched shows you a Perfect World that is far from perfect. And as shocking and unbelievable as some of the elements in the story seemed to be, the reality is that there are those that think it is alright to limit knowledge by banning books and taking away choice. The future that Cassia lives in, the one she is now determined to fight against, could become the future that we all live in if we allow it. I have to say, that possibility is quite unsettling.

Although Matched ends with a clear message that there is more to come for Cassia, more she must endure and struggle through, it is not quite a cliffhanger. It is more of a promise that we will see her take flight. I know the wait for the next book will be long and possibly unbearable, yet I’m really looking forward to reading more!!!

Favorite bits:

” I believe in you,” he says, his voice hushed and almost reverent. “That’s more faith than I ever thought I’d have.”

“You don’t have to write it back,” I say, feeling self-conscious. “I just wanted you to know.”

“I don’t want to write it back,” he tells me. And then he says it, right out there on the Hill, and of all the words I have hidden and saved and treasured, these are the ones I will never forget, the most important ones of all.

“I love you.”

11 comments

Posted at 4:34 pm  •  Labels: 2010, 5 stars, Ally Condie, ARC, Book it Forward, Book Review, debut, Dystopian Fiction, The Penguin Five, YA