The book Matched is written by Allie Condie. She also wrote the other books in the series Crossed and Reached. They all won many awards and it is her best-selling series yet. Allie Condie is a well thought out writer and writes very descriptive books.
Matched is a teen fiction novel that takes place in an Uptopian Society. It is filled with many rules that are very strange compared to what things are like here. The main character is Cassia, a teenager who faces some interesting yet alarming problems. Along with her there is Xander, a boy who Cassia is matched with, and Ky Markham, a boy who she meets and soon becomes friends with.
The story starts out with Cassia is matched with Cassia waiting to go to the Banquet with her best friend Xander. The Banquet is a time when the boys and girls that are 18 get matched with each other and will be together for the rest of their lives. She is stunned when she is matched with Xander and receives a chip that will reveal all the things about her Match. When she does plug it in the screening port, she is startled when a different boy’s face appears on the screen of the port. She thinks it must be a joke, but she also does worry because she thinks she recognizes. She doesn’t tell anyone, especially Xander, not knowing what his reaction would be. When she goes to her free time activity at the game center, and Official requests to speak with her and tells her that it was probably just a prank. But Cassia still feels that the face she saw was more than a prank.
The story continues throughout Cassia’s normal life until she goes on a hiking class. There she meets Ky, the mysterious face on the screen. They begin to talk, every day when they are finished walking. She eventually tells him about him being the face on the port, but he agrees with her that it wasn’t true because he cannot be matched with anyone, because of a crime that his dad committed.
She realizes later on after they continue to meet at hiking that she might have a secret love for him. She can’t hide it for long, especially from her Match. But one day she wakes up to a dreadful scream and finds out that Ky has been sent to war, away from Cassia. She is moved away to a different place also because her mother got a new job. Could Cassia and Ky ever find each other again?
The theme of this book is that if you want to accomplish something, go for it. Cassia sets off in her new home to try to find Ky, knowing that she will, instead of waiting around and thinking when Ky will return. I really liked reading this book. It was a never-put-down book, because it would surprise you with different events that makes it hard to stop reading. I would recommend this book to people like to read about adventures. It causes you to think about it more and more. This book is a must-read book.