Review: Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

When I first heard about this book, I was immediately drawn to it because of its awesome cover. Then I heard all of the raving reviews for this and knew that I had to read it sooner or later. Then Reached came out and I realized that I needed to buckle down and finally start this series.

So I did.

And um, I'm kind of mixed about Matched. There were things I liked, but things that I didn't. It's hard to explain so I've been putting this review off, because I wasn't sure how to convey what I what I felt.

The Good:

I really like the world that Ally Condie created. The Society is a place where Officials governs and dictates everything from what you eat, where you work, who you’ll be married with, and when you’ll die. From the outside looking in, it seems restrictive and scary. To those who are in the place, it seems ideal. No one gets sick, you know when you’ll die, and for the most part, everyone is happy.

Only, it seems like there are people who are frustrated and annoyed with the Society, but they remain silent, because if you cross the Society then you put yourself and your family at risk.

From this, you know that the Society isn’t as great a place as it originally seemed. Plus this is a YA novel, a dystopian at that, so you know that the Society will be shady and that the main characters will try to take it down. In any case, I did like hearing about the Society.

I did like all the poetry that

The Okay

Remember how I said that I liked hearing about the Society? That’s still true, only we never really learn a lot about them. We do know a few things, but not enough to show how scary or wrong this way of live is. There were a lot of things that never made sense either. The poems and stories of the old are illegal, but you never really understand why. Is it because if you read them, you’ll stop wanting to follow the Society? If that’s the case, why does it seem so easy to find them? Also, I don’t understand the reason behind making sure no one writes anything. Since the Society allows people to read, how would this stop people from writing things?

I was a bit disappointed that we never really learned too much about the Society, but this isn’t the main story of Matched so I could forgive it.

The Bad:

The main plotline in this novel is the love story between Cassia and Ky. Cassia was matched with her best friend Xander, while Ky wasn’t matched due to his status with the Society. One day, while Cassia looks at her microchip to see Xander’s picture, she sees Ky’s picture instead. The Society tells her that this is a glitch and to ignore it, but it only makes Cassia want Ky now.

I get that their relationship is meant to be free, but it didn’t feel like it was. Cassia isn’t meant to be with Ky, but she’s drawn to him. True love and all that. The only problem is, the reason why Cassia wants Ky instead of Xander. It’s not free pure love, as it’s meant to be depicted, it’s the forbidden kind where you’re told not to touch something, but it only makes you want to touch it more. The fact that Ky was also told about the screw up, means that he pursued her after this as well.

There is a line near the end where Cassia says she chose to love Ky and that the Society didn’t make the choice for her, but I kept thinking that she wouldn’t even care about Ky if this whole thing didn’t happen. (view spoiler)[Plus, it’s later revealed that the Society knew that she was going to go after Ky anyways so they purposely told her things to mess with her. (hide spoiler)]

The whole thing didn’t make sense to me and it only made me feel horrible for Xander. He was in the friend-zone, got out of it, only to be placed back in it because Cassia found something better. Forever Alone.

Overall:

I wanted to like this book, but the love story is really contrived and depressing for the other guy. This book reminds me a lot of Delirium. In both stories, the main character is matched with someone that the society picks out for them, but they soon discover another kind of love which makes them question everything. The only difference between the two is that I felt like Delirium was executed a bit better.

There are good things in the novel, but there are a lot of annoying things as well.

2.5 stars out of 5