Matched

Matched (2010)
by Ally Condie

How did I not hear about this trilogy until now? In this young adult dystopian novel, we are introduced to 17-year old Cassia who has just been told by the Society who her match/life partner will be. The officials arrange what is best for everyone in Society, so there is no need to question their decision. But after she sees another face flash briefly on her matching screen, Cassia’s world slowly starts opening up and bubbling with questions, passionate feelings, and rebellion.

I don’t have a lot of time to sit and read, but I did manage to fly through this book in less than 24 hours with stolen bits of moments. Reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Matched again looks at the “perfect” life versus a life of choice, with the good and bad it might bring. This is the kind of book that keeps you up way past bedtime, and makes you relieved there is more to the story. I’m eagerly awaiting the next two books in the trilogy.

Matched (2010)

Quotes:
ch 6 “You were ready to jump. You just weren’t sure of it yet.”

ch 17 “Is falling in love with someone’s story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?”

ch 32 “Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right ones.”

*Update:
Finally read the second and third books!
Always so interesting now to read about pandemics…

Quotes:
Crossed (2011)
ch 13 “It would be much easier to mark how I want the world to be, instead of trying to figure out how it really is.”

ch 32 “But then I feel it. Even hidden away in the dark, I can tell that it is there. Some small part of me is always, always free.”

ch 35 “It’s not knowing how to write that makes you interesting. It’s what you write.”

ch 42 “Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.”

ch 50 “When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as whys–why he walks like this, why he closes his eyes like that–you can love those parts, too, and it’s a love at once more complicated and more complete.”

Reached (2012)
ch 20 “You cannot change your journey if you are unwilling to move at all.”

ch 61 “It’s all right to wonder.”

ch 62 “When we fall in love the first time, we don’t know anything. We risk a lot less than we do if we choose to love again.”

ch 62 “We would compose poems about love and tell stories that have ben heard in some form before. But it would be our first time feeling and telling.”