Matched

In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one… until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow — between perfection and passion.

(From matched-book.com)

I thought I would love this book because of the plot, and the dystopian world it's set in. It automatically made me think of books like The Giver and Hunger Games. But what I really loved about this book was the language.

Every line of Matched was like a well crafted poem. Despite the fact that it took place in a futuristic society, a lot of the book felt very close to home. The emotions Cassia goes through, her guilt and anger and happiness, all felt very real. Not to mention what was going on with the Society--they gave out information and technology very sparingly, and destroyed so much of what was beautiful and wild in their world. Like the summary says, the Society decides who you love, where you work, and when you die. Having so much freedom taken away from you sounds like a nightmare, and I couldn't put the book down once.

Matched is definitely one of my favorite books of 2010 (it came out in November, I'm just slow), and I would recommend it to both teenagers and adults.

I just wanted to quickly go back to the poetry of the novel--it was one of those books that I'm sure I'll read a few times. Once, in the heat of the moment, just to get to the climax as soon as possible, and again, later, to read over every word and cherish every beautiful, tragic syllable.

One of my favorite quotes from the novel is this:

"I think of how perhaps the best way to fly would be with hands full of earth, so you always remember where you came from."-Ally Condie (Matched)