Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Series: Matched (#1)
Publisher: Penguin
How Received: BookExpo America
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.
Got to page: 57
I was only at page 57 before I realized that I couldn't finish Matched.
I mean, it's not like I wasn't excited for it. I've been coverlusting over it since I first saw it several months ago, and then when I heard the description, I went into happy bibliophile mode. Combine that with quite a few stellar reviews (purposefully ignoring the not so stellar ones), and I was happy to whip out my brand new Hunger Games bookmark and dive in.
The problem is - well, the book. I knew going into it that it had a lot of ties to Lois Lowry's The Giver; most utopian-dystopian societies do. But the thing about Lowry's books is that it's short and sweet and shows you the problems right away. It also gives you a main character who realizes what's wrong within the first few pages.
Maybe if I kept reading Matched, I'd like it more. (Kristi's review of it convinced me otherwise.) I still love the cover and Ally Condie, the author, is a sweetheart from everything I've seen of her.
But I want to strangle Cassia, the main character.
I mean, I'm fifty pages in. By now she should have begun to realize that's something is wrong, especially with Ky's face flashing and her grandfather dying because he's 80 and that's the death age. (It's not really a spoiler if it happens in the first fifty pages.) But she's happy to just swim contentedly through the Society until somebody points her the other way. She's airheaded and silly and just - she epitomizes the word 'blonde.' (I can say it. I am blonde.)
I'm sure that plenty of people are going to like this, especially if they like dystopia; however, I'm a character driven person. Your plot could suck, your world could be falling apart, but if you give me a good character, I'm yours.
Unfortunatley, Matched didn't manage to do that, and I have a whole bunch of other books I could be reading.
Final Thoughts: I'm not going to tell anybody not to read it - I feel like a lot of people are going to enjoy it. I, personally, just didn't care for it.
Cover Notes: OMIGOD IT'S GORGEOUS. *flailing* That is all.