There has been some hype surrounding Ally Condie’s post-apocalyptic YA romance novel, Matched. It has been compared to The Hunger Games (which I love btw) and The Giver. Also many prominent book bloggers that I follow have deemed it “amazing and unique” and “on my all-time favorite list”. Unfortunately, I found the story to be nothing special and I don’t understand why people think it is so great. (Just read through some reviews and many Goodreads readers agree with me. Woot! Same brainwave! Suck on that book bloggers who are too nice to admit when something isn’t good!) 

WARNING: Here there be spoilers!

I will give Condie props for setting up a very interesting world, which initially hooked me into the story. But what it had in setting, it lacked in character development and plot.

The novel is narrated by a teen girl named Cassia, and in this world, people have assigned marriages chosen for them by the government based on research into their personalities and genetics…etc. Cassia is “matched” to her best childhood friend, Xander, and all is well… UNTIL an error occurs and she sees that she could have been matched to Ky, a mysterious boy in her neighborhood. Her curiosity for Ky creates a love triangle and all this is happening while the government is scrutinizing their every move. The plot goes through Cassia’s struggles with her feelings about Xander and Ky and her discovery of the truth about the government.

Now I hate to pull a Twilight comparison….BUT there is a reason why Edward and Jacob were so well liked. They were distinctive characters that had specific personalities that made Bella fall in love with them (some might find them to be creepy, but that’s what made it so fascinating). Xander and Ky on the other hand don’t really have anything special going for them. All I can gather is that Xander is a smart dude who’s really nice and will take risks to help his friends and family. Ky is a guy who is just a product of his birth and is kind of a rebel and poet. That’s all I got for these two. Naturally, since there was nothing really special for Cassia to fall in love with, the romance aspect of the story was completely lackluster and not believable. What it really needed was the element of sexual tension that most YA romances are known for. Condie never had that moment where you think to yourself, "OMG are they going to do it?!" Also Condie didn’t even describe what either Xander or Ky looked like besides saying they were handsome. What’s that all about? So every time Cassia kissed one of them, all I could think was … so what? And you’d think stuff like that would be even MORE dramatic and suspenseful because the society doesn’t allow that type of shit, but alas…NO.

The other aspects of the story were quite interesting though. Cassia’s small steps in rebelling against the government created enough suspense for me to keep reading. However, there was no real resolution or climax at the end of the story to tie off everything that Cassia did during the story. I suppose it was written this way in order to make room for a sequel, but still I don’t believe that is an excuse for not having good closure in a book. I mean she spent all this time memorizing this poem and learning how to write and hiding illegal artifacts and what does she do with them at the end? Uh….nothing of purpose. The whole story instead was driven by her forbidden romance with Ky, which was completely dull to me. Great…(I don’t even understand exactly why she picked him over Xander. It was never truly explained.)

Lastly, I want to wrap up this quick review by talking about Condie’s writing style. It’s not bad and it was very “readable” but what I don’t understand is why she finds the need to continuously write these one-liners at the end of every section of the book. Is she trying to be incredibly profound or something with her themes and messages? Because after a while, it was no longer thought provoking but more like she wants to beat the reader over the head with the message. That staccato style was kind of annoying.

I’m sorry. I know this whole post was kind of me hating this book. Really it wasn’t THAT bad. It was just overly average to me (one giant MEH). I don’t think I’ll be reading any of the next books in the series. One was quite enough. But if you get bored and see it in the library, feel free to pick it up and give it a shot if you want.

Metro reads rating

** 2/ 5 stars