Matched (Matched, #1) in Shut Up & Read

Aug 06, 2011 Marla rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, romance, series, recommended-to-me, dystopia, audiobook, young-adult, zz-2016, science-fiction, award-winner

Interesting dystopian world that reminds me of the Blade Runner (or the actual Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and 1984. It's kind of an introspective book without a lot of action or even drama.

Finished the trilogy, but I didn't love this first book and I think it is by far the best. So if you weren't thrilled with this book, I'd read some spoilers about the other two and not bother reading them. If I knew then, what I know now, I would've abandoned the series after the first book.

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Jun 26, 2012 Yzabel Ginsberg rated it liked it

Shelves: romance, young-adult, dystopia

To be honest, I'm not sure how to rate this book, so I gave it an average mark. Let's say, 2.5 to 3 stars.

I kept on putting it down, then taking it again to go on reading. Regularly, I felt like I was getting bored with the story, yet I still felt like I wanted to see it unwind. I think this was due to the characters, with whom I didn't really feel a connection. I liked discovering what happened to them (even though it was predictable enough, in a way), and they had their good sides, but they ju ...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Jessica Payne rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult-read

Matched, by Ally Condie, is set in a futuristic world, where forced evolution has created an optimal society through a process called “matching.” At the age of seventeen, boys and girls can choose to be placed in the matching pool, and from this pool, Officials of Society will evaluate the information they have about each person (which is pretty much everything) and scientifically calculate their perfect match. A person’s match is who they will marry, have children, and live with until their 80t Matched, by Ally Condie, is set in a futuristic world, where forced evolution has created an optimal society through a process called “matching.” At the age of seventeen, boys and girls can choose to be placed in the matching pool, and from this pool, Officials of Society will evaluate the information they have about each person (which is pretty much everything) and scientifically calculate their perfect match. A person’s match is who they will marry, have children, and live with until their 80th birthday, which is when Society has deemed as the optimal time for death. This futuristic Society is supposedly perfect – eradicating diseases, eliminating starvation, and giving everyone what they statistically need and deserve.

Cassia Reyes is part of this Society and the story opens on the day she is matched to her best friend, Xander. Xander is everything a girl could want – he’s handsome, smart, good, honest and Cassia has known him all her life. When she finds out Xander is her match, she couldn’t be happier. That is, until Ky enters the picture. Ky is the opposite of everything Society would want for her – he has a lowly work position, a precarious past, and low social status. But Cassia is intrigued by him, the way he sees the world, and the beauty he brings into her life. Cassia starts to question her match, and ultimately, she begins to examine the basis of her Society more closely, and she doesn’t necessarily like what she sees.

Matched is so much more than just a dystopian romance. While the reader is faced with the familiar elements that seem to make up this genre, like an oppressive government or the increasingly common love triangle (which started, for me at least, with Team Edward and Team Jacob), Matched has its own unique aspects that are well worth reading. Cassia’s decision of who to love, Xander or Ky, is much more than it appears on the surface. The love triangle embodies the book’s running them of choice – the ability to make a choice, the responsibility of the outcome those choices, and ultimately how our choices define who we are and who we become.

This post-apocalyptic world is also uniquely designed to make the reader realize the importance of the range of human emotions and the importance of “not going gentle into the night.” The Matched Society promotes peace and tranquility, and while these qualities are not necessarily undesirable, the book illustrates how important the more fierce emotions are to life as well – passion, pain, longing, and desire. Matched encourages the reader to question the quality of a life without these experiences.

There is also a wonderful theme of nature that pervades the book. In Cassia’s Society, much of nature is controlled. Only certain plants and trees are cultivated – those deemed acceptable by the Society, those having beauty or purpose. Growing things that are deemed problematic or useless are ripped up or cut down. Many of these images of nature parallel how the Society treats the people living within it, and it is interesting that once Cassia and Ky start to explore the natural world, when they are allowed outside the perimeters of a safe and controlled world, that their feelings and their true selves really begin to bloom.

There are so many beautiful moments in the book, places that actually brought me to tears. The language is eloquent in places and the lyricism of the writing at times feels like forbidden poetry. I would recommend this book based on its many merits – the gripping story line (I absolutely burned through this book), wonderful fully-formed characters, and a heroine that embodies the perfect balance of confidence and longing. I can’t wait to read the sequel Crossed!

Read more reviews visit my blog Young Adult Fiction for the Young at Heart: http://yafortheyah.blogspot.com/ ...more

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Jan 15, 2011 Monica Millard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, own-paper

I saw this book in the stores the day it came out, not knowing or having heard anything about it in advance. And yes, I'll admit freely I judge a book by it's cover... well at least often for choosing purposes. This cover drew me in right away. It's so beautiful but deceiving. It gives the impression this is going to be a smooshy book about romance and not a whole lot of depth which is fine, sometimes that is a perfectly lovely escape from the kind of book this really is.

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Jan 26, 2012 Sasha rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Matched is the classic story of forbidden love; Cassia, the main character, lives in a dystopian society in which each person at the age of seventeen is matched to the person they are suited to marry. Cassia sees her friend Xander's face show up on the screen... but then Ky Markham, an Anomaly, flashes on her screen briefly and thus sets in motion the romance that will shape the rest of the story.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. And there were some parts of Matched that I thought genuin Matched is the classic story of forbidden love; Cassia, the main character, lives in a dystopian society in which each person at the age of seventeen is matched to the person they are suited to marry. Cassia sees her friend Xander's face show up on the screen... but then Ky Markham, an Anomaly, flashes on her screen briefly and thus sets in motion the romance that will shape the rest of the story.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. And there were some parts of Matched that I thought genuinely appealing. The dystopian element, I found, had the makings of a superb story. While not as fleshed-out as I would have liked, I found the details to be very intriguing and found myself wishing that Condie had written more about the history of this society that Cassia is in. I do hope that will be addressed in the next book. I found myself cringing at the oblivious situation that the members of that society were living--they only have 100 books, 100 songs, and so on... and the government provides them their food and education--it was like something out of a nightmare for me! Needless to say, I was enthralled by this frightening societal setting.

As for the romance plot, I wouldn't exactly say that it was a romance triangle, because Xander didn't really stand much of a chance. I liked the forbidden love between Ky and Cassia; Ky seemed like an interesting person, and I wish that more had been revealed about his backstory, because he seemed to have a really hard life before the events that took place in the book. However, once again I was left disappointed. I found myself feeling that throughout the book--like there was a lot that went unexplained, a plot aspect which skipped right over "mysterious" and entered "annoying" territory.

Overall, I found that Matched could have been an interesting book to read if it had been more developed. The dystopian world that Condie established was more alluded to than described properly, which I suppose was on purpose to set up the story for a trilogy. However, this made me feel like there was an entire section of the book missing. The ending also was wanting--not in a good way. There was very little conclusion; I understand that this is the first of a trilogy, but the complete lack of closure was annoying, and made me feel like I had wasted time reading the book in the first place. Not much happened throughout the book, something I only realized as I was writing this review. Yes, the romance development was interesting and the dystopian society was captivating, but in terms of actual substantial things taking place, not much happened. I hope more action will follow in "Crossed," Condie's next installment in the trilogy. ...more

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Dec 15, 2010 Angie Taylor rated it really liked it

A dystopian novel that very much reminded me of Scott Westerfields Ugly series. Ally Condie creates a futuristic world where the governement, or society, has created the perfect community where every choice is made for you or predetermined, completely taking away any individual choice or freedom. For the most part the people in the community don't seem to care they don't have any individual freedom because they have trusted the system for a long time, and things have seemed good. However, when t ...more

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