REVIEW #8 - Matched by Ally Condie

TITLE: Matched

AUTHOR: Ally Condie

GENRE: dystopian

PUBLICATION DATE: Nov 30th 2010

SYNOPSIS:

Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.
The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

REVIEW:

Cover

I love it. The whole series' covers are beautiful and match (ha, see what I did there?) the concept of the book. It's simple yet eye-catching.

Plot

Plot. Story. Um.
The idea was just right for a dystopian novel - society that is controlled in every aspect of their lives, so much that everything is predicted for them (their behavior, for example).
And what did the author do with this quite a nice idea?
She took it and threw it out of the window.
Why?
Because the book is plain boring. I was reading further and further, waiting for some action or at least a main event that would resolve everything and make me want to read the sequel - nothing like this happened, though. The characters do what they're supposed to do, there's nothing that pushes the plot forward.

Characters

Funny thing, because I liked the main character's (Cassia) parents the most. I felt that their story was a lot more tragic than Cassia's story. In fact I was a lot more engaged in the subplot revolving around them than the main love triangle, which was forced and left me totally cold.
Moreover, the main character comes to random conclusions that aren't the least bit explained. There's no character development whatsoever, Cassia just kind of "hops" a few steps at a time and leaves us readers rather bewildered.
Then we have the two boys, Xander "the good neighbor" and Ky "the mysterious stranger". Although neither of them is the typical witty bad boy (I think that would be like a frosting on a cake, ugh) and their friendship seems unusual give the circumstances - again, the lac of plot/action/character development destroys everything.

Writing

Too many empty words, too little essence. I mean it. I think what the author was going for was "poetic", but the poetry in this case didn't work. We get random bits of poems, which supposedly make such an impression on both Ky and Cassia that in the end they fall in love with each other. What...?
There were so many useless paragraphs. I almost screamed for some action to happen.
Let me give you an example of such nothing-words.

That word, calm, sounds impossibly beautiful, gloriously uncomplicated. A water-smooth word, a word that can take the edge away from fear, gloss it over, make it shiny. Calm. Gentle.

What...?

Overall

This book left me sad and frustrated. Sad because such a good idea was wasted. Frustrated because I'm a fan of dystopian books and this one left me with a distaste and less hope for good dystopias that could be written in the future (thankfully I'm reading Wither by Lauren DeStefano right now and I'm positively surprised).
The cover plus the fact that it's quite a popular YA book made me pick it up and I guess my expectations were too high.

Rating

1 stars out of 5.

Have you read this book? What do you think?