Matched by Ally Condie

Well it's a new year and before it ended I read Matched by Ally Condie.  Being a huge fan of The Hunger Games I am intrigued by other dystopian society type novels.  This one in particular caught my attention by the interesting cover art, a girl sitting in a bubble, looking for a way out.  Much like The Hunger Games there is what is called the "Society" much like you'd think of The Capital.  This Society is several generations in the future from us now where the Officials have decided that we had too much excess in our lives.  Too much access to technology, too many songs, books, paintings, etc ... We were desensitized so they scaled everything back.  A committee was put together long ago to choose the Top 100 of everything basically.  There are now only 100 Songs, Poems, Paintings, etc ... in the world that people know and learn about.  Everything that was not chosen by this selection committee is now taboo and considered contraband.  Nobody seems to question anything the Society tells them to do.  They just live there lives and go with it.  Everyone has adequate housing, they are given food specifically to cater to their individually monitored diet plans and are even scheduled to die by their 80th Birthday because 80 is a nice round number and you have lived a long and full life by 80 presumably.

Our story follows Cassia Reyes and her friends and family.  The story is called Matched because before your 18th birthday, each citizen is given the option to choose whether they want to be a "Single" or a "Couple".  If you choose to be a couple then you are put into the selection pool to be matched with the person in the Society who is your optimal match for producing offspring.  Most people get matched to a person they have never met and have a strangely arranged courtship based on pre-arranged port calls (meaning a screen much like a video call) or outings where you are babysat by an Official assigned to you to monitor your courtship.  **Spoiler** Cassia is matched to her long time friend Xander who lives on her street which is a rare occasion.  She also later finds out there was another person who was her potential match, his name is Ky.  Of course Cassia was over the moon when she found out Xander was her match, what could be better than already knowing the person you're going to spend the rest of your life with right?! But finding out there could have been someone else you were paired with for all time who is "off limits" because he happens to be considered an "Aberration" through no fault of his own and is now not given the choice to be matched or single.

All in all this was a very entertaining read save for being a bit slow at times.  I'll quote here one of my favorite authors, Cassie Clare on her review of Matched ...“This futuristic fable of love and free will asks: Can there be freedom without choice? The tale of Cassia’s journey from acceptance to rebellion will draw you in and leave you wanting more.”
–Cassandra Clare, New York Times bestselling author of The Infernal Devices andThe Mortal Instruments series

I am now reading the next book in the series Crossed  which was released in August 2011.  I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!