***Warning: Spoilers Ahead***
Matched by Ally Condie, is the first in the three-book trilogy. It takes place in a dystopian society where everything you do is regulated to some extent.
Cassia Reyes, the main character, is heading to her Match banquet at the start of the tale. In the Society, you can be called to attend your Match ceremony at any moment after your seventeenth birthday. And for Cassia, it occurs exactly on her eighteenth birthday.
The Officials in the Society are the ones who match people together. It is supposedly a very intricate process, the responsibility only given to certain Officials. Whoever your match is – that will be your future husband or wife. There is no other choice, though you can decide to stay single.
This doesn’t bother Cassia, however. After all, her parents are happy together and she’s never had a reason to question the Society’s choices before. Why start now?
Yet, when Cassia later inserts her microcard to read the information about her match…something odd occurs. The face of her match from the banquet appears, yet seconds later, the screen goes black. A different face appears.
Disturbed by this, Cassia wants to tell one person: her grandfather. And because his Last Banquet is coming soon – he is eighty, the Official allows for her to do so. She tells him and they discuss it together. Then, Cassia asks about what her grandmother would say.
“I think,” he says finally, “she would ask you if you wondered.”
This is the beginning of Cassia starting to question whether or not the Society is right about everything. Could they be wrong about some things? Make mistakes? What if she is meant to be with the other boy that appeared on her microcard? Not the one she was matched with?
Matched is a story of romance, intrigue, and discovery. It follows the life of Cassia who is only beginning to wonder about everything she has been taught.
~ Southern Dreamer
Note: The quote is from Matched by Ally Condie.
Southern Dreamer 