Book Chop: Matched

Title: Matched
Author: Ally Condie
Genre: YA Dystopia
Verdict: A less thrilling take on the dystopia trend, but not insubstantial.

A few things out of the gate here: I listened to the audio version, which was pretty well-done. The narrator they got for it was good, she sounded young without sounding childish. That's kind of a peeve of mine, when the age of the narrator doesn't match the age of the first-person POV. But anyway...

Ally Condie has published a bunch of books with Deseret/Shadow Mountain, but this is her first major national title. It's definitely a chick book, though being in the dystopia category you'll hear people throw around titles like THE HUNGER GAMES and GONE in the same conversation. I think a more apt comparison is Lois Lowry's THE GIVER, because the story here is not at all centered on the action, but the meaning of a totalitarian government.

Cassia Reyes is your teenage protagonist. In the Society, all the tough decisions are made for you and people don't focus on what makes them different from others. The point is for everyone to have the same things and to be the same thing, as far as net results go. Your spouse is chosen for you during a matching ceremony, based on compatibility factors. They don't make mistakes.

When Cassia attends her matching ceremony, she's paired up with a guy she already knows, which is rare. But then a glitch occurs, and for a second she's matched with a guy who's not legally eligible for matching. This sets Cassia on a quest of curiosity that eventually leads her to question whether the Society has perfection down to a science, or if their cradle-to-the-grave coddling is its own form of suppression.

Featuring many concepts that our own society is debating today (speech restriction, death panels, heavy censorship, etc), it's a thought-provoking look at what freedoms we're willing to give up in exchange for what guarantees. Just don't look at the "dystopia" label and expect it to include teenage monsters killing each other in a labyrinth. It's more of a romance than anything else.