Review: Matched

By: Ally Condie
Published: November 2010 by Dutton
Format: Hardback, 336 pages
First Reviewed: February 2011
Buy: Barnes & Noble//Books-A-Million//Amazon//Book Depository
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In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

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.

Rating: 2/5

Of course I'm like everyone else and had to get the book that sold for seven figures. Do I think it was good? Yeah, it was all right. Worth seven-figures? No. I was, however, excited to read this because 1) I love dystopians. And 2) I just read Lauren Oliver's Delirium and I wanted to see which triumphed for me. Different storylines and all, but both are dystopian love stories.

First off, the setting wasn't very original. It reminded me too much of other dystopias, especially The Giver. I would have liked to see more twists on it. It was described all right and dealt with all right, but it just wasn't anything I haven't seen before.

Liked the characters, but didn't particularly love them. Especially in the beginning, I didn't know how I was going to like Cassia at all. I didn't care for her voice and it took me quite a while before I got a personality. As for the boys, they weren't anything special, meaning I see those types in so many YA books today. There were some nicely developed minor characters, as well as some not-so-developed minors, but overall they were developed all right, but nothing different.

To be frank, I thought I was going to hate the writing in the beginning. After getting a few chapters in, I got comfortable with it. I didn't dislike it, but it just wasn't amazing. I felt as though some of the dialogue and language wasn't consistent thought out. Sometimes I wondered, more in the beginning, if they had an entirely different "futuristic" dialect, but then it became incredibly modern, and at times the dialogue felt like narration. And I even found a great deal of errors, which made me frown, of course. For a book that sold for this much, I don't think that many errors, especially the simple ones (missing quotes, a couple instances of wrong dialogue format, etc.), should be made. Overall, I think Condie is a good writer, but has a lot of room for improvement.

Eh...the plot held my attention, which I liked, but again, it just wasn't original enough for me. The whole romance love triangle thing is so overdone in book world, for one, and for two, there weren't any real twists to it. Girl has best friend, she gets to be with best friend, but then girl likes new guy, and hurts best friend. It's been done a thousand times. I would have been okay if the rest of the plot was unique, but it really wasn't. Again, it wasn't bad, and I enjoyed the book pretty much, it just wasn't original enough. The last, I'd say...fourth was the most unique part of the whole thing, so I'm looking forward to the next book where I think Condie will hopefully broaden her creativity.

Overall, it was pretty good, and while I have my issues with it, it still held my attention throughout, which is always the main thing.