Matched by Ally Condie

Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Pages: 366
Publisher: Dutton
Reading Level: Young Adult

Publish Date: November 30, 2010.

Cover Rating:

Rating:

In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Taschima's POV:

This story is beautiful beyond words. Ironic, since the story is so full of poetry. It completely, and utterly, blew me away.

Cassia lives in a world where everything is, has, and will be decided for her. Who she marries, where she works, when she dies. This system has worked for a long time, it worked for her parents, hell it has even worked for her. Until recently. Every kid on their 17 birthday gets matched to who they will marry. The match is final, is calculated to create the healthiest babies possible. But on her match Cassia sees two faces, one she has known her entire life, and another one which is full of possibility. Soon Cassia starts questioning everything about her life. Can someone be really alive, when they aren't really living?

"My heart is on fire and I have to keep my mouth shut tight so that I don't try to burn these Officials with the flames. That's what you think, I say to myself. You think there's nothing here because we're not putting up a fight. But there are words in out heads that no one else knows. And my grandfather died on his terms, not yours. We have things of value but you can never find them because you don't even know how to look."

-Cassia pg. 205

I love, love, love this book. It's such an amazing dystopian novel. As I was reading it it made me feel so much. In scenes when Ky and Cassia where together it made me think of scenes from Shakespeare in Love, because their love is so complicated, so inspirational, so sweet, so forbidden. I love it when authors can make you feel so much with just a few words, as I read scenes with Cassia and Ky I felt as if I was reading of love in its purest form.

"I close my eyes as his lips touch warm on my cheek. I think of the cottonwood seeds brushing against me that day on the air train. Soft, light, full of promise.

...For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood, and I don't push the memory away. I have kissed and been kissed before. This is different. This, more than my real birthday the day of the Match Banquet, feels like a day to mark time by. This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning."

-Cassia pg.258/259.

The characters are exquisite. Cassia at first is the perfect example of the good girl who abides by the rules, until various things go wrong and it forces her to think for herself, live, create. Ky is so strong yet vulnerable, cunning, smart, dark, brooding, I love him. There are some others, like Cassia's parents, her brother, Xander (Cassia's best friend and Match), without their essence the story wouldn't be the same. They leave a clear mark in your mind, and I really want to know more about them on the second installment. I felt connected to each of them.

In a lot of ways the story reminds me of The Hunger Games, and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, but it still holds its own. It has it's own unique things, like poetry, another part of the story I really enjoyed.
Bottom line, READ THIS BOOK. For goodness sakes read it. You wont be disappointed.

PS; Do I even have to talk about the cover? I mean, come on. Gorgeous. And when you have it in front of you the front changes color, like a rainbow. Also, the girl in the front + the dress = exactly how I picture Cassia.

*Quotes subject to change.