Cassia has lived all of her life under the watchful guardianship of the Society. She sees no faults.
They tell her what to read.
Because culture was too cluttered before.
There was too much.
There was too much.
It’s for the best.
What to wear.
It’s practical. No jealousy, no vanity-
It’s for the best.
Who to love.
That most importantly. The Match gives us our perfect partner. Our perfect life.
It’s for the best.
But Cassia’s views of her stable and structured world alter, after the night of her Match Banquet, after her Match is revealed –perfectly- to be her best friend, after she believes her life has been set in motion, after she sees someone else’s face on her Match’s microcard: a second Match. An outsider. Someone remarkably and cautiously different from those who surround him.
And she can’t help but be drawn to him.
The second Match, the secret Match, the wrong Match, pulls the wool from her eyes. She starts to see the injustices of her world, where her actions are predicted by the Society before she thinks of them, and she starts to yearn for freedoms that she’s never wanted before.
She wants to rebel.
But there is no rebellion in the Society. Not ever.
Matched was a Christmas present, and I finished it on the 27th. I am desperately awaiting the sequel.
Everyone who I’ve talked to about it says it reminds them of The Hunger Games. Which is true- the rival love interests, the dystopian setting, the overall themes, they’re very similar (although there’s a lot less violent, gory death in this one.)
But what it really reminds me of the most is Lois Lowry’s The Giver- a classic, if you ask me. The absolute acceptance of the Society’s laws, under the promise of a longer, perfect life, is almost as eerie as the way the characters do exactly what is predicted of them, to the point where Cassia’s data predicts she will pick the green dress to wear to her Banquet, and she does. The people of her world innocently believe in the Society- at least within the confines of the cities – in the same way Joshua’s people blindly follow the Sameness in The Giver.
Although they seem aware of the lack of choice, too. It’s just that the act of choosing what you want seems so little next to the safety, the perfection, that the Society has to offer. Not to mention the ever present threat of Reclassification…
I loved this book. And since I’ve been in a bit of a book funk these past few months, roaming listlessly from novel to novel with no winners, I’m so happy to be able to say that.
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