Matched by Ally Condie

Matched, book 1

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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.
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I picked up this book out of sheer curiousity at the library the other day as something inexplicable drew me to it.

Containing little action, it instead holds the mental progress and development of a young girl who starts to doubt the Society and even goes against it. A Society where all is controlled, regimented and calculated.

Deeply fascinated by its depth and dystopian world, it reminds me of a mix of the films Equilibrium and Gattaca; in the first, society is under strict rules and emotions are kept at bay, and in the second, humans are bred into as healthy and good specimens as possible. Beyond that I'm also strongly reminded of the society as we see it in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Matched is incredibly well written, despite its lack of actual action, so much takes place and following Cassia's "awakening" as it dawns on her just how little freedom she has was truly captivating and I struggled to put it down.

I'm a bit ambivalent concerning the ending as I feel it just runs out into the sand - I had expected something more dramatic. However a second book, Crossed, is expected in the fall of 2011 and I'll definitely be reading that to see where Cassia story is going.

318 pages / published in 2010
Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2011

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On another note, apparently the film rights have been sold to Disney, so that'll be pretty interesting to see how that works out.