Take That, Katniss Everdeen

Matched by Ally Condie

The comparisons to The Hunger Games were inevitable: a not-too-distant future world and a love triangle fueled not just by passion but by politics. However, this is no copy-cat novel. Ally Condie just may have created a new young adult sub-genre.  Not the dystopian, but the dys-Utopian novel.

Imagine this: In a not-too-distant future, the Society has eradicated cancer and most other life-threatening diseases.  Everyone is matched to a vocation that is perfectly suited to his or her talents,  crime is virtually non-existent, and everyone dies peacefully at the age of 80.  The ideal world, right?

Wrong.  The fact that "Society" is with a capital "S" should've been your first clue.

Another way in which Society ensures health and longevity is that they match individuals to marry who have compatible genetic profiles to guarantee healthy children. (The whole genetic-engineering concept should be your second clue.) When 17-year-old Cassia Reyes is Matched, she is initially overjoyed to find that her Match is someone she knows, which doesn't happen very often - her best friend Xander.  Her euphoria lasts until the very next day.  When she puts the micro-card of her match in the computer to look at Xander's baby pictures and think about what a perfect life they will have, for the briefest second - another boy's face appears. And she knows him, too...a shy, smart outsider named Ky, who is actually more than an outsider. He is what the Society calls an Aberration, for reasons unknown. Those few seconds not only make Cassia start to question the validity of her Match, but set in motion a snowball effect that lead to her challenging the foundations of the Society she lives in.

While this isn't as much of an adrenaline rush as The Hunger Games and sequels, I found this novel (and its protagonist) more interesting, more plausible, and more relatable, than Collins' (admittedly superb) trilogy. I also liked that the secondary characters, in particular Cassia's parents, are much more layered than the adults in Hunger Games.

Matched is the first in a planned trilogy, and I'll be eagerly pre-ordering whatever comes next.