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 (Spoilers included):
I was really excited to read Matched as I'd heard so many great things about it and it seemed like it was going to be a fantastic addition to the dystopian genre. All in all, it was. Cassia was a likeable and relatable character who begins to question the Society that she lives in and can't quite decide between her best friend Xander and the boy whose face appears on the screen for an instant; Ky. Matched has a strong focus on Cassia's feelings for her two love interests, but this is closely followed by her conflicting opinions of the Society.
Matched was an emotionally powerful book. The most emotional point for me was Cassia's grandfather's last day. It was sickening that the Society could accept this form of quick death without blinking. Furthermore, I loved the way in which new poetry and literature (apart from the 100 songs, poems, stories etc) were so valued by Cassia that she cherished them.
The love triangle between Cassia, Xander and Ky was interesting as I liked both love interests. Xander was a perfect gentleman. At the beginning, Cassia mentions him a lot, however, once Ky, the outsider, enters the story, it's as if Xander has been pushed out of the novel through no fault of his own. He's left with no chance for Cassia's love and I could not help but feel slightly put off by Cassia's behaviour. I am interested to learn how Cassia's feelings will change in the sequels, but I really wish it's not the main focus of the trilogy, but rather, I hope the Society is.
I welcomed the fact that Cassia got on with her family; she respected her parents, protected her brother and loved and remembered her grandfather. Cassia has the perfect, sensitive family who get on really well. One aspect that I found unrealistic was how understanding her parents were at some points and how quickly they, more specifically her mother (who previously always obeyed the Society's rules) accepts Cassia's choice to find Ky even though she has a perfectly good and devoted Match and their whole family has to be uprooted and perhaps in danger due to her actions. This could have been realistic to me if I'd seen more of Cassia's mother and learnt the reasons for her change in behaviour, because what I did observe, wasn't enough.
Whilst reading Matched, it was easy to notice the rigid structure of Cassia's life- she went to the same places over and over again and there wasn't much of a change in scenery throughout the book. In regards to Cassia's grandfather, I was left with some questions on how the process of preservation would occur. Taking a sample of a person and trying to recreate them would only lead to a clone surely?
This clone, while looking exactly the same as the person the sample came from, would not have any of the memories of the original person. This means that the word preservation is only utilised in the sense that the person's DNA would carry on into future generations, and not their memories. I really did need some more details about this in Matched to come to a solid conclusion about what really happens.
The only way to describe Matched in terms of its genre is that it is a quiet, dystopian novel. That does not mean that Matched wasn't powerful as it did have an impact on me and it was highly memorable. It is quiet in the way of action and adventure. For me, Matched felt like a prequel to the rest of the story. It is not possible to read a book without comparing it to similar books in its genre and thus I compared Matched to the Hunger Games and Uglies.
These are dystopian novels with female protagonists. However, whilst Katniss in the Hunger Games travelled away from her district, travelled through the rest of Panem and entered the Hunger Games in the first book alone and Tally in Uglies not only questioned the City where she lived but also travelled to The Smoke, Cassia's story focusses solely on the small area in which she lives for the whole novel (barring the final chapter).
For this reason, I believe Matched could have incorporated more action and adventure, rather than just questioning the Society and Cassia's romantic feelings for it to be at its optimum. Cassia's perspective was therefore narrow due to the reasons stated above. Though I wanted to know about what was going on in the wider Society and more about the rebels, I didn't learn this information. In the end, Cassia decides to find Ky who has been taken to become a soldier. However, her lead of the 'Sisyphus River' is surely not enough to go on and I felt it was unrealistic that she would venture out into a war zone of which she knows nothing about based on a hunch.
I would have been interested to learn more of what was going on in the Society as I have some vague impressions and have been left with questions such as:
When Cassia's father was burning the books and the data was saved, where did that data end up?
What is the exact process for food to be delivered to every house?
What event was Xander talking about when he said they used the red pill once before?
What disaster happened that caused the world of Matched to occur?
Who is the leader of the Society?
Is it really possible for the world to be like this within such a short space of time?
Overall, I really enjoyed Matched as it was a powerful, emotional and compelling novel that makes the reader reconsider what is valuable to them. The romance aspect was important to the novel and interesting to read about. I would recommend this book to everyone. I look forward to the next book in the trilogy to discover what happens to Cassia, Xander and Ky and the Society in general.
Book Rating: 4/5
Cover: 5/5
Concept: 5/5
Author: Ally Condie
No comments:
Post a Comment