Matched, by Ally Condie

“What is the point of having something lovely if you never share it? It would be like having a poem, a beautiful wild poem that no one else has, and burning it.”

- excerpted from Matched

We all know not to judge a book by its cover, but that is exactly how I picked up Matched, by Ally Condie (and, truth be told, that is exactly how I choose at least half of the books I read). A student of mine had the book out on her table as she was working in my classroom, and I couldn’t help but do a double-take when I saw the glossy cover depicting a girl in an enchanting green dress, pushing her arms out against the bubble in which she is trapped. Luckily for me (because I have the patience of a two-year-old when there’s a book I want to read), my student was planning to return the book that day, so after she gave me a synopsis of the plot, I immediately requested that the book be put on hold at our school library, and before the day was over, the book was in my possession.

This new young adult fantasy novel (published in 2010 by Dutton Books) reminded me of Brave New World, 1984, and especially The Giver. Cassia lives in a world where her choices are made for her, dictated by “the Society.” It is a world where marriage partners are pre-arranged based on DNA (increasing the probability of healthy offspring) and where every inhabitant carries a green pill to ward off anxiety.

On Cassia’s seventeenth birthday, she attends her Match Banquet, where she will discover who she is to marry when she turns twenty-one. She is delighted when she realizes she already knows her Match... until she is accidentally given another boy’s data, that is, and finds herself falling for the one person she can never marry.

As the story progresses and Cassia’s forbidden love grows, her society’s secrets begin to unravel, revealing a dystopia where poetry, art, and all forms of self-expression are stifled in the Society’s effort to ward off rebellion. Condie’s novel urges readers to hold tight to freedom because it can be stolen away in the blink of an eye.