Matched (review)

Cassia is ready to be matched—trusting the Society to make all of her daily choices, she is now putting her faith in them to find her an ideal partner with whom to mate (at a young age when her body is at peak condition) and live out her eighty years (after which she will be poisoned to save her from the ravages of old age). Since most matches come from faraway regions, she is shocked when Xander, a childhood friend, is picked for her; she's even more surprised when a second match appears, a boy who cannot possibly be her mate because Ky is an Aberration and therefore ineligible to marry. Suddenly, Cassia is seeing flaws in the perfect system everywhere, and her ideal, cozy, protected world begins slowly unraveling as she realizes she is falling for Ky, doubting the wisdom and ethics of the Society, and putting herself and her loved ones in grave danger for not acquiescing to the endless rules of the Officials. Condie masterfully presents this not quite dystopian society with enough balance to make it clear how it is both suffocating and entirely warm and safe. There is an earnest, well-intentioned reason behind every creepy action the Society takes that sheds light on the way they attained all-powerful status. Cassia, hopelessly naïve but armed with a few tiny tools of resistance from her slightly rebellious family, is an excellent narrator, as she is both insider and outsider to the machinations of the Society, the most intriguing element of this otherwise predictable (but still well-developed) romance. Of course, Cassia chooses brooding, mysterious Ky instead of sturdy, amiable Xander, but it is the journey into independence that really changes Cassia in ways that readers will find memorable.