Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie

Ally Condie’s novel Matched (2010) takes place in an extreme socialist society in the future USA, where the “Officials” control everything and are always watching everyone. They decide who you marry, where you work and when you die. However the main character Cassia, will not accept this as her fate and decides to make her own choices. With this decision comes dangerous and complicated consequences, and she becomes involved with secrets and falls in love with a forbidden boy, Ky. The society has chosen a match who she is to be married to, her best friend Xander, a very unusual occurrence which draws a lot of attention to them. The microchip she has received from the Match Department should contain information about her match, but when the face of Ky appears before her she soon realizes that something is very wrong.

Matched is a sci-fi novel that explores the themes of finding yourself and courage. As Cassia gets sucked into the forbidden words that she finds in the illegal poem which she is given from her grandfather, she begins to realize that she does not want to live under their terms and is willing to sacrifice and leave everything for the sake of love and truth. Along the way she struggles with keeping these secrets and this causes her to get thrown in to critical situations, where she could risk getting caught which demands a lot of courage.

The book is mostly considered a science fiction novel since the features in the story are typical for this kind of genre such as a future controlled society and advanced communication systems. It can also be classified as a young adult novel seeing that it is for the most part directed to young readers such as teenagers considering that the characters are quite young of age.

The main theme in Matched is rebellion, which is a recurrent subject in the novel. While living a risky double life with one being the typical society ideal and the other sharing old and forbidden poems with the forbidden crush, she questions the whole system of their society. By doing this, she initiates a rebellion which the reader is able to follow in the two other books of the Matched-trilogy.

The author writes in a way that keeps the reader interested and the story is written out of Cassia’s point of view. This makes the reader experience how she feels and what she thinks about, which gives a more emotional perspective of the novel. Although at some parts of the book,...