Wednesday 24 August 2011

Review: Matched by Ally Condie

MatchedTitle: Matched
Series: Matched #1
Author: Ally Condie
Publisher: Puffin (UK)
Publication Date:  December 2010
Pages: 366
Special Features: Interview with Ally Condie
Goodreads Average Rating: 3.79
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.
A whole different type of dystopian.

A dystopian love story, which follows the same kind of plot line of every other dystopian I have read. Yet for me Matched stand out much more, it isn't based just on taking down a society which is wrong, but instead focuses on the love triangle, featured in this story.

I can tell that the sequel: Crossed is going to be the same high standard as Matched, and perhaps better, even at the early stage in the series, I can tell straight away that Ally Condie has some big plans for the books ahead.
The book is more for female reader's, yet would be appealing to all ages and gender's.
Despite, the love dominating storyline, there is something for everyone and a very exciting read.

It was not at all predictable and constantly left you feeling like you were literally hanging on the cliff, with all the cliffhanger's, featured within the book, some solved in Matched and other's will be solved later in the series.

This dystopian, in different to other's I have read and seems to be slightly more civilised than other's, and Ally Condie has made such an amazing effort of making the society relatable to what we live in today, yet still of changed to the point of making it a 'dysopian'. In this book we still hear about the old 'society' as it was not that long ago, and you still see aspects of everything being changed by the Officals.
The character's for me were the best yet.

Cassia, manages to hold the same strength as a character as other female protagonists in Dystopians do, yet she is different. We witness a much larger change within her, and it was great seeing the change from Cassia at the beginning of the book, to tactical and strong Cassia it closed on. She is very relatable and holds the same emotions females hold today. She get's excited for her Match banquet, where she will find out who her partner will be for rest of her life, and even gets excited after finding it out.
Ky, one of two male protagonist's, and the guy she realises she has feeling's for, has became my new fictional crush. He is quite a broken and different boy, to other's we come across in the book, and has this type of bad boy edge, which makes him very appealing. Though at times he seems quite adorable, and what is better than a cute bad boy. Like Cassia, we also see him change throughout the book, though less as the person he is from the begging of the book, but instead stand out much more, and gain what could be seen as 'book confidence'.
Xander, the other male protagonist in the book, is quite a love hate character. I really liked him at the beginning of the book and thought he was going to be my new fictional crush, but slowly he became one of these characters who I couldn't stand.

This is a must-read Dystopian, which you are bound to love, the same I do.

1 comment:

  1. I completely agree with your review, this book is fantastic!

    ReplyDelete