If you’re looking for the next Hunger Games, it is not here. Go to Divergent by Veronica Roth instead. If you hail The Giver as a classic, go reread it. It really is that good and worth multiple readings. If those books are too graphic for you, if you are a sensitive reader, or if you enjoy romance, here IS Dystopia Lite meets Chick Lit.
Matched isn’t about a girl rebelling against society who happens to acquire a love interest along the way. In such a case, the girl’s primary objective is to defeat the ruling government and hope that her friends will survive to be reunited with her in the end. The heroine’s goal is to save many and right a wrong.
No, Matched is about a girl who lives in a dystopian society who thinks she has fallen in love. The society will restrict her from being with her boy of choice and she will lie and sneak and cheat in order to be with him all the while hoping she doesn’t get caught breaking the rules. This girl will rebel against society for her own selfish desires and feel bad about the people she hurts along the way. Her goal is the boy.
And is a boy really worth it? A boy that the heroine has known since she was a child, but never paid a bit of attention to until a mistake is made. A mistake made by a supposedly infallible Society.
In The Giver, the “government” chose to eradicate pain, both emotional and physical. In Matched, the Society chooses to eliminate choice. The Society makes choices for the people. They choose where a person lives, what job a person works, when a person marries and has children and when a person dies. The Society has a system in place to do this with accuracy.
The Society uses statistics and probability to determine what best fits each citizen. The Officials are able to predict where the people will be the most efficient. The Officials can also determine the best matches among people so that they will give life to the strongest, healthiest, smartest children. Society aims for the best life for all citizens.
Cassia, our protagonist, (for I wouldn’t give her the title of heroine yet,) believes in her Society. Her parents seem happy. Her friends seem happy. She is well on her way to acquiring a data-sorting position somewhere someday that will likely make her happy. And she is nervously excited to attend her Match Banquet tonight! It is her eighteenth birthday and today she finds out who is her match – the boy she will marry when she turns twenty-one.
It surprises Cassia and her family that her match is a boy she knows and has grown up with - her best friend in fact. It is extremely rare for that to happen. Usually the newly matched boy and girl have years of courtship to get to know each other under the direct supervision of the Officials. With the excitement of the unknown taken from her, Cassia must begin to look at Xander, her match, in a new light. Or rather, that is what should happen, but it doesn’t because there is another surprise in store for Cassia.
At home, alone in her room, and eager to look at Xander on her microcard – will she swoon over him? After all he is handsome. She watches her match replay on the microcard, but Xander’s face fades to be replaced by another boy, Ky, also a childhood friend. Two matches? How can she have two matches? And know them both?
The Officials are quick to jump in and admit that a mistake has been made. Xander is her match. Ky’s face was added by mistake. Ky shouldn’t even be in the matching pool because he is an Aberration. He has an infraction against him and he must remain single.
And from here on, the book seeks to answer the question: Xander or Ky? Not Society or Choice. Not right or wrong. Not safe or risky. Xander or Ky? Until it builds up to a litany of Ky, Ky, Ky, Ky, Ky.
This novel is romance with a unique setting. But it speaks to a microcosm and it gets old pretty fast. It doesn’t answer the bigger questions that Hunger Games fans will be asking. I want to know more about the Society and the people. What has been lost. What has been gained. And why?
I don’t really care about where the Officials have taken Ky. Nor do I care if Cassia throws caution to the wind to follow and find him. I want to know - where is the heroine who takes on Big Brother!?
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