Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Series: Book one in the Matched series
Summary (taken from Goodreads): 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.

This book is a great story and I really enjoyed reading it. Please beware that the following review is full with words like "wonderful", "great", "love",... Isn't it funny that I cannot find the words to express how much I enjoyed a book where words were so important for the story?

Let's start with my favourite quote:

Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?

What I liked the most: The society. Yes, you read that right. I liked the dystopian society the most. The society is everything I never want to happen. You are not allowed to think for yourselves, make your own choices or create something new.
The society, every part of it, and most of all the people in it were was well and completey thought through. The feelings Cassia had for the society, her doubts, and her hopes were understandable and I felt for her and with her through the entire book. She went through a great character development and I cannot wait to see were her ways will lead her in the next installment.

But my favourite character would be Ky. In a world that was so bad to him, where no one knew his true story he was still able to keep faith and stay who he truly was.

My favourite scene was definitely the one where Cassia read the poem for the first time. It showed how much power and energy words can have, one of the many reasons I love poems. The scene was beautifully writtten and like a poem itself, really poetic.

Ally Condie has a lovely writting style and I really liked the pictures she created and how she interwined the past of her characters with the present.

The book really got me thinking about a lot of thinks. Not many YA books were able to do that lately. I thought about how important choices are for us. In the society they seem to live a great and healthy life, but aren't the bad experiences we make, all the heart break, and all the pain important for who we are and who we are going to be, too? Aren't they an important part of life, too?

Fun fact: A fun fact about Matched would, for me, be the colors of the three books. There are free important tablets in the society that everyone need to cary around with them. A green one, a blue one, and a red one. And the book covers are green, red, and blue.
So while I wait here until I can get my hands on book two, I try to make predicitions on the future of Cassia based on what the tablets do to you. :D

Philosophic, romantic, and poetic, a wonderful dystopian novel.
Love and Words
KJ

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