About Matched by Ally Condie
I picked it up on a whim when I saw it at an airport during a layover. It had been recommended to me once from some random website so I thought, “eh, why not?” I didn’t even think about it again for another two or three weeks before deciding it would be a good distraction from the 3-day Christian concert my mom dragged me to. (40 bands, outside, in the rain, all day. I needed something to hold my sanity). I held no expectations and started it with a feeling of complete indifference. Other than a small pleading in the core of my very being that this wouldn’t be another corny, Twilight-esc teen soap opera.
I should have known better than to think that a teen love story would be anything but a soap opera on steroids. But this book surprised me. Which, I guess, isn’t hard to do when you hold such low expectations for everything.Though it had the obligatory love triangle and 6 chapters of, “I can’t be in love with [this guy], I love [this other guy]. Or maybe I do love [this guy]. No, I definitely love [this other guy].” I actually really enjoyed it. So much so that I started yelled at the book every time Cassia turned from one guy to the next. (Goddamnit, she was going to be with Ky. Or somebody was losing a face.)
The Society that Condie created is definitely something else. Like The Giver but in color. That was actually my first thought when the details of this Society started to unfold. That this was just another one of those “Big Brother” books revamped to fit the angst of the modern teen. But she managed to create this futuristic Utopian society and make it all her own. I loved everything she did from the match ceremony to the thing with the pills.
One of my favourite things were the people in charge of the Society. I loved how they weren’t stupid by any means and had evolved to such a state as to where they had absolutely every little detail of every person’s life figured out. I’m not saying I liked these people, I hated them with every fiber of my soul, but I liked how she portrayed them. Everything.
What I loved most though was Cassia’s fall from Society. I’ve noticed in some of the reviews from bloggers that they became annoyed with how easily a girl so wrapped up in the rules of the Society pushed it all away and fell for the one person she wasn’t suppose to (but, I guess, in a sense, she was suppose to) and became utterly obsessed with him. Like I said, teen romance.
I’m actually confused as to why this would upset anyone without them understanding that that is exactly how a teenager works. I can say from experience for the most part. Being brought up in a very large family that was strictly southern Baptist, the church was my life. I based every decision on what I believed would keep me from punishment which I later realized was the only reason I ever believed in any of it to begin with. Anytime the smallest thought of doubt crept in, the fear of punishment pushed it away. You later find out that that’s the exact same thing that’s happening to the people under the Society’s rule. Even though deep down they know the Society is run by sociopathic monsters, their fear of punishment was greater than their desire for freewill.
I still believed in the church and all it said up until I was 16. I was on stumbleupon and found an atheist website.
It took 45 minutes for all that the church tried so hard to build up to slowly start to crumble until it all gave way. I suddenly saw everything from the outside. In less than an hour all of my beliefs made a dramatic 180 and there was no way for me to ever get back. That’s why I can understand how a person like Cassia, a person with a mind they’re not afraid to use, could so easily turn on something they so deeply devoted their whole lives to.
As far as her infatuation with Ky: he challenged her worldview. He helped open her eyes to things she would never have dared to think about before. He was different and, as far as she was concerned, he was suppose to be her match all along. She was still a teenager though and teens tend to be plagued with these awful little things called hormones. It usually works something like this: You see an average person and maybe you’re strangers, maybe you’re best friends but either way you see them as just a person. Then one day, something happens that sneaks the thought of love into your brain. It could be the smallest of things but overtime you start to find yourself thinking about it more and more until it’s grown about 4x it’s original size. The worst part is the more you deny it the faster it grows. It also sucks when it’s something that’s pretty much forbidden to you because that just makes you want it even more.
For Cassia, seeing Ky’s face on Xander’s card was the itty bitty heart that snuck its way into her mind. Then the chick coming and telling her it was an accident disturbed her enough to make her think about it even more. As she starts realizing that she might like-like Ky a bit more than she should, she starts going into denial and telling herself that she’s suppose to be in love with Xander and this made her think about Ky even more. When it eventually got to the point where she was quite positive she had a thing for Ky, it was forbidden for her in her Society because A) he was a Single and pretty much the lowest of the low to the Society and B) she had already been matched.
People tend to be attracted to things that they’re told to stay away from. It’s the 13-year-old rebel in all of us.
I think the thing that hit me the most was the ending. When she finally thinks she’s one-uped the society and has become her own person, she comes to the horrible realization that they’ve been 10 steps ahead of her the whole time. I could feel my heart drop when I read this. I became sincerely angry and just about threw the book.
I also didn’t know there was going to be a sequel. I thought that that was the ending. Apparently my mom knew I wasn’t very pleased with the cliffhanger when I screamed “GODDAMNITNO” about 10 decibels over the sound barrier.
I don’t know what a decibel is.
