Book Review | Matched by Ally Condie
Lissywrites/ July 1, 2013/ Book Reviews, Novel/ 0 comments
After some thought and endless back-and-forth with myself, I’ve decided to start a little mini-series of posts, if you will, of some of my favorite books from month to month, always posted at the end of the month in question (or at the very beginning of the next month. I’m lazy, and it will probably happen).
These posts are for book discussion and to express my overly-fangirly nature over certain books and series. Though I already have an extensive library with plenty of reading material, I’m always looking out for new or interesting titles. Not only is this for me, but for other writers! Often times, writers forget they started off as readers. Support your fellow authors and read!
WARNING: SELF-PROMO IS NOT ALLOWED IN THE COMMENTS
It will be considered spam and deleted immediately. However, if you would like me to buy and read your book, I’ll gladly take recommendations on this page. Fill out the contact sheet with a link to your book, and I will get to reading! While I will read most recommendations, I won’t review them all. If the book in question would probably get less than three stars, I’ll simply keep the review to myself, and either email the author directly (if they themselves sent me a contact sheet), or just not discuss the book at all. I want to recommend books that I will read, and that I think others will enjoy. No need to embarrass or completely wreck a book’s reputation in the name of reviewing.
Now, with all of the “rules” and “disclaimers” out of the way, on to the books!
I read the last book of the Matched Series by Ally Condie: Reached. While I only read Reached this month, I will only be doing a review of the first book. Mainly to prevent unnecessary spoilers, while introducing the series to new readers. I will review the others upon request or recommendation.
1st Book in the series: Matched
Rating: 4/5
Genre: YA/Dystopian
Matched is about a futuristic society, appropriately named the Society, which was formed after a vague technological disaster. The MC is Cassia, a teenage girl, Society-molded, and on her way to her Match Banquet, which is the ceremony that puts teenagers together with their soul mate. Though, in my opinion, it’s just a prettier version of a breeding ceremony – moving on!
At the banquet, Cassia is surprised to find that her match is her longtime best friend Xander Carrow. So many cuddly feels at this point, other than my disgusting image of a breeding ceremony *shiver* – moving on!
Cassia is happy and comforted by the fact that she already knows her match and even lives in the same borough (town, basically) as he does, which is rare, as most of the teens going to be matched don’t already know their matches nor do they live near each other. After receiving her match, she is given a microcard, something the Society creates in order for matches to get to know one another before meeting.
Cassia rushes home and pops that puppy in and everything is going hunky-dory-lovey-dovey until another face pops up on the screen. A face that isn’t Xander’s. Somehow she has been matched with two people, and the book has Cassia trying to figure out how and why this happened because the Society and supposedly perfect – the Society doesn’t make mistakes.
I’ll stop there, since most of the information I’ve given can be easily read on the back of the book, and I’m tired of info-dumping. *shrug* Onto the review portion!
This book completely gripped me. The world it built had me floored, and all of the wonderful technology involved was wonderfully crafted. The only reason this book didn’t get a full on 5/5 was because there have been many reviews saying this book is identical to Lois Lowry’s The Giver, I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. I can’t really judge Matched on that because I have no idea if it is or not. So, just to be safe, I ticked off a star. Still, a great book.
This is your classic love triangle, though, in my opinion, the winner is apparent from the beginning of his introduction. I could just be biased, but I knew she would choose him. Anywho, in all honesty, I probably would’ve given this book a 4/5 anyway just based on the love triangle. I have nothing against them, and they definitely sell books, but I feel like they follow a similar formula every time.
Regardless, I love how Cassia grows from the love triangle. While most love triangles are just for the romance factor, with the MC barely growing as a person, Cassia actually takes the fact that there is a choice to make her more independent. The Society wants everyone to rely on them, obviously because they want control. Well, Cassia wants control, but of her own life. The revelations she goes through are very thought-provoking, at least in my own opinion. It had me turning pages and wanting to read self-help books. Condie needs to write a book called How to Take Control of Your Life by Using Love Triangles: Love is a YA Learning Device. Condie, if you’re reading this, you can find my contact page above. Let’s talk pages.
But the pacing is slow. While the revelations are thought-provoking and beautiful with their metaphors and symbolic meaning, they tend to be dragged on. The plot and pacing suffers for it. The only thing that kept me reading them was because they were well-written and beautiful, so kudos to Mrs. Condie.
All-in-all, it’s your fun run-of-the-mill YA romance book with a fun dystopian twist. Not exactly the quick kind of read, but one I would recommend to buy and add to your collection.
Purchase Status: Purchased
I hope you enjoyed my first review. This is far from perfect and a major experiment, but I hope you still find it interesting. I hope enough people like it enough to keep me writing more. Now, for questions, what did you think of the review? Did you agree, disagree? Any recommendations? Anything you’d like to add? Let me know, and comment below.
Thank you for reading!
-Lissy
