Matched by Ally Condie

Title: Matched

Author: Ally Condie

Type: Young Adult Novel
Genre: Fantasy

Series: Yes book one

Pages: 369
Copyright: 2010
Publisher: Penguin Group

Rating: 2.5 out of 5


Summary: From Good Reads

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Feelings:
So many post-American series recently: Hunger Games series, The Selection series, and of course Mathched. Another similarity is that all of these are stories told in the first person. This limits the amount that we know about the society and how it came to be the way it is today. I admit this bothered me in each case, Hunger Games fans sorry but it was not an exception. In fact I'm not sure if it didn't bother me more in the Hunger Games as that was the first of the three that I read (listened to audiobooks but will say I read the Hunger Games for the sake of making it easier). It prepared me for what was coming in Matched and The Selection thus making the holes in the history easier for me to deal with.

My problem with this book was the world I might have liked it more if it weren't for the world that is created here. I know I'm not supposed to like the officials, and I don't, but I would like to understand them a little more than I did through Cassia. The characters did seem a little bit predictable to me but in a world were everything is planed out I guess things would be predictable.

I did enjoy the story. It has to be pretty bad for me not to find something to like, and the writing wasn't bad. First person narratives often bothers me in that I want to know more but I can't because the narrator doesn't know what I want to know.

I would recommend this to readers than enjoyed The Selection there are similarities and they are both love stories with a bit of politics.