Matched

[Caroline]

In the book Matched, Cassia lives in a dystopian society where the government decides everything for you. At the beginning of the book we learn that Cassia is about to go to her Match Banquet; the government tells them who they will be matched with for the rest of their life as their spouse. After turning the age of sixteen, everyone is matched, unless you are an Abberation, pretty much an outcast from society. These Abberations remain alone for the rest of their lives, without any choice. Cassia soon learns that she is matched with her best guy friend Xander, which makes her very happy. Soon, as she looks to the microcard that the government gave her to learn about her match, a different face appears on the microcard, one other than Xander. The face she sees is Ky Markham, a face that she recognizes. Something about him perplexes her and she begins to wonder what this could have really meant, if he was meant to be her match instead. As she falls more and more for Ky, she breaks all of the rules going against society. This goes on throughout the book and Cassia has to figure out who she is truly meant to love and the person she is meant to be.
I personally enjoyed this book a lot. Even though I’m usually not a huge fan of dystopian novels, I did enjoy Matched, immensely. This book had a lot of romance and drama that I could connect with, and I’m sure that many other teenagers could. This book has a constant theme of self-identity, which I really related to and connected with. As a sixteen year old, like Cassia, I’m trying to figure out who I am meant to be and what I’m meant to do with my life. In this way, I really felt like I connected to the main characters and situations, which made this book fun and easy to read. Cassia had an external conflict because, it wasn’t possible for her to be with Ky, because they government is everywhere and they control everything. There is no choice, or any of the decisions in your life; they have very little freedom. Cassia has an internal conflict because she is constantly battling with herself what is right and wrong. She knows that is it wrong to love Ky because she is going against the whole government, and also she feels that it is wrong because she is betraying Xander who is supposed to be her true match. She constantly fights this inner battle throughout the whole book. She has to overcome all these struggles to find out who she really loves and is meant to be with, and who she really is. I found all of these conflicts and the whole storyline to be very fascinating, which is what made it such a good book.

[Kdrake1]

It's nice when the book is more enjoyable than expected.