The Kari AnnAlysis

In the Society, everything is chosen for you. This includes who you marry, what you eat, what your job is, when you have kids and when you die. Can you imagine a life like that? Well Cassia can’t imagine it any other way, until the day of her Matching.

The odds are slim, she is matched with someone she knows, from her own town. But when she watches a little chip that is supposed to tell her more about her Match, his face disappears and another shows up, and it’s another guy she grew up with. Now Cassia questions the system and her Matching. Did someone make a mistake? Which boy should she choose?

The Matching opens Cassia eyes to how they live their lives. She has a lot of questions and wonders what will happen if she doesn’t do everything she is told? Mix in a little teenage angst and lust and the Officials will start watching you more. Cassia has to decide whether breaking the law is worth it.

Wow! That’s all I can say after this book. Yes, I know that doesn’t leave a good review, but Wow!

In all seriousness though, I am loving dystopian books. The Hunger Games series and Matched are definitely my favorite books of the year. Yes, I am a fiction person, but I tend to lean towards books that could be real. These dystopian pieces show a life that could be, but isn’t yet. They push the limits, but could turn to reality in the snap of a finger. I would love to get into the minds of the authors who write these books. I don’t want to live in the world’s they create, but they intrigue me and make me want more.

If you didn’t see the quote I pulled for Teaser Tuesday last week, check it out. I think it summarizes this book in a great way. I always wanted to pull out this quote:

Pg: 246“I think people should be able to choose who they Match with,”I say lamely.

“Where would it end, Cassia?” she says, her voice patient. “Would you say next that people should be able to choose how many children they have, and where they want to live? Or when they die?”

These are all things that we do get to choose in America and I can’t imagine living a life without those choices, but I know these ideas are not too far from reality. My husband works for a Japanese company and has learned a lot about their culture. Their top students don’t get to choose their jobs or where they go to school. They are placed. And there are many cultures around the world who still have arranged marriages. These ideas may be primitive, but they may also be the future.

The point of the Society doing all of this in Matched is to obviously have control over everyone, but they spin it to make people think it’s the best for them. They are each fed to certain requirements of what will be best for them. They have kids by certain ages because those are the best years. They die by 80 because after that, they can’t live a full life. They don’t die young. Illness, disease, it’s not there. We want a world where disease and death don’t taint our society, but this book shows that possibility, with a huge price to pay!

I give Matched 5 bookmarks. I saw in a Q&A that Condie is writing two more books in the Matched series. This makes my day!

ISBN: 978-0525423645
Published: November 30, 2010
Author Website
Kari got this book from Around the World Tours

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