Book Review: Matched
Final Rating: 5.5 out of 10.
Quick Summary: Author Allie Condie paints an intense futuristic world in which the Society controls everything. Only Cassia Maria Reyes doesn't want her heart to be controlled, too.
Man, I haven't done a book review in ages. I've been reading heaps, but I'm just lazy.
Anyway, I love books that work around a future alternate universe. This is certainly a mind boggingly example, which takes "working for the greater good" to heavy extremes. The entire concept is highly intriguing and certain aspects of this take of the future is refreshing. I've read too many stories where the government collapses and the future is awful. Here, the government is all-powerful but working for the people.
The definition of "good" though, that's where the problems lies.
When I say everything is controlled by Society, I'm not lying. Food portions and nutrients are personalised, everyone wears essentially the same clothes with minor variations to denote rank, and then there's the fact they everyone dies at 80 years old. Seriously. Before midnight on your 80th birthday, you are "kindly" killed.
There is no religion, no pay (everyone works together for the benefit of society), and there is a set limit to everyone's knowledge and what the public can know. No one can fight the word of the Society.
Actually, there's a lot of similarities with this system and that of communism. :-\
Another controlled aspect is partnerships--you are paired up via genes and personalities for the perfect 'Match'.
When Cassia is Matched with her best friend, she thinks it's perfect. But she soon finds out that her best friend wasn't actually her original Match. *Insert love triangle here*.
Okay, so the [love] story is a bit generic at its heart: a girl falling for mysterious boy instead of childhood best friend who is in love with her. Some of the writing is lazy (and it's in first person, present tense, blarghy) and occasionally you feel like the author is leading the reader around in circles. Some characters are very flat and are hardly fleshed out. Character interrelations are kind of haphazardly executed, too.
There are touching moments, beautiful moments definitely, but overall it doesn't hold the atmosphere that well. I kind of get the feeling I was better sold by the idea rather than the presentation.
The book is part of a series, so I am holding hope that more important plot points are in the later books (woot for gradual build up) but Matched isn't something to be rushing out to get.
A nice read, but nothing extraordinary.