MATCHED Review -- Ally Condie

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

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It's hardly 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 has ever dared follow--between perfection and passion.
Matched is a story for right now and a storytelling with the resonance of a classic.

A lot of professional reviews of MATCHED mention, allude to or imply similarities to THE HUNGER GAMES. Reading this book makes me go, "THE HUNGER GAMES, who?"

MATCHED left me breathless, literally, and after I turned the page, I realized that I seriously underestimated this book when I first bought it and skimmed through it, and that when CROSSED/book #3 come out, without a doubt I'm buying them.

The physical action in the book is relatively low, the most heated scene being when someone is taken away, but that really is irrelevant, because even though the novel isn't physically powerful, it is emotionally powerful in a breathtaking way. It's almost like you're experiencing everything Cassia is experiencing as you read.

Condie's prose is BEAUTIFUL with a capital B . . . and E, A, U, T, I, F, U, and L. Not to mention the cover . . . mmmmmmph! When I first saw it, I was incredulous. It is absolutely, jaw-droppingly beautiful, yet so simple at the same time.

The characters are all really interesting, being controlled by the Society in the way that they are, left with minimal choices to make for themselves. Some were mildly interesting, but for the most part, Condie really fleshed them out and made them three-dimensional (which would seemingly be extremely hard to do, considering they've minimal choices to make, and choice is a key factor in good characterization), but Condie does it really well.

I have to admit, after reading this book, I cannot WAIT for CROSSED.

P.S. TEAM KY!!!

Five Owls

The next two books I'm going to be reading and reviewing are UNEARTHLY by Cynthia Hand (finally gonna finish it!) and HEREAFTER by Tara Hudson. Stay tuned! :)