Saturday, April 27, 2013

Matched

Matched
Ally Condie

Matched (Matched, #1)

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

Summary (from the publisher):  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.


Review:  This is yet another young adult dystopian novel containing a love triangle, and though it had an interesting summary and a lot of positive reviews, it didn't live up to the hype.  I felt that the three main characters weren't developed enough for me to understand how Cassia could love either one of them, but especially Ky, since she appeared to have no history with him, yet started falling in love with him based solely on seeing his photo.  I spent most of the novel feeling sorry for Xander, who seemed to be a really great guy.  Next I had complaints about the society.  Sure, the society completely controlled everything in the citizens' lives, but the people generally seemed to be pretty happy.  The author didn't provide any history about how the society ended up this way, and the sense that trouble was brewing came kind of out of the blue towards the end of the book.  Finally, hardly anything actually happened in this book; it was very slow paced.  All in all, this felt like a very long introduction to a trilogy where all the action starts in the second book.

So why did I give this three stars, instead of two?  Well, I found the writing to be easy to read with some beautiful passages.  And some of the aspects of the society were thought provoking.  But mostly because it picked up at the end, and now I find myself wanting to see what happens in the second book.

Rating: 3 stars

2 comments:

  1. Boy you've been in a young adult mood, specifically young adult dystopian fiction. I may have to check some of these out. I saw on Goodreads that there is a sequel out for The Selection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know. I put a whole bunch of books on hold at the library, and they all came in at the same time. I generally really like that genre, but some of these books are just not that great. I am going to add the sequel to my library list, but reviews seem to indicate that it's not as good as the first one, so I'm not super excited about it.

    ReplyDelete