BlogHer Book Club: Matched

Matched is the first novel in a dystopian trilogy by Ally Condie. This piece of young adult fiction finds us living in “The Society”, where we meet Cassia a young girl, about to take the first step into adulthood.

In this society, everything is predetermined.  There are no choices. Everyone is fed a government prescribed diet. There is no sharing food because the calories are carefully portioned. Your job is based on your aptitude. Free time is portioned out sparingly. Even the day you die is predetermined.

Almost every person attends their Matching Ceremony after their seventeenth birthday to find out who will become their future husband or wife.  Almost always it is a person in a far away region.  In an unlikely outcome Cassia is matched to her best friend Xander.  

Cassia and Xander are childhood friends.  They grew up playing together, they know each other and their families know each other.  Everything is great!  Cassia and Xander are delighted.  That is when everything goes wrong.  

Cassia puts her microchip with information about Xander, her match into her port.  Xander’s face pops up on the screen, but it is quickly replaced with the image of another boy.  And not just any boy, but another she knows well.

The rest of the novel takes us through Cassia’s internal conflict. It raises questions in Cassia that she never had before.  Throughout her life she has been a conformist, never once questioning the rules, or the predetermined outcomes in her life.  Suddenly, she is a fountain of questions.

A pretty typical coming of age scenario, set in a futuristic time and place, but typical none the less. It was a quick read, and I did find myself “reading just one more chapter”, but I think I was expecting more. The cliffhanger does make me hopeful for more adventure and excitement to come in the next two novels, but the ordinary storytelling in Matched does not make me want to go out there and buy them.

This was a paid review for the BlogHer Book Club, however the opinions are all mine.