bookcraazy

Exquisite is a word that comes to mind when describing this book.

The story was captivating. I couldn't bring myself to put it down but at the same time I almost didn't want to keep reading so that I could savour it for a little while longer.

When I first picked the book up I was a little worried that I wasn't going to enjoy the love triangle. So many books have taken love triangles and butchered promising story lines by over selling it.This is not the case with Matched. Condie managed to sell the love triangle without going overboard. She didn't spend page after page with Cassia, the main character, agonizing over which boy she loved more. Cassia's confusion was made clear, she loved Xander, but she knew it wasn't love she was feeling. And she knew that even though loving Ky was going to hurt her, she couldn't stop herself. It wasn't overdone, it wasn't oversold.

The Society. I was so prepared for this to be underdone. Too many books go overboard on the romance and don't bother to build the rest of the aspects of the story; abandoning the basis of the plot. Not the case with this book. The Society was an ever present shadow, looming over every little detail of everyone's life. From what they ate when to the Infractions they committed the Society was a presence that couldn't be avoided.  We learn, along with Cassia, what the Society is and what it has done. And why something that it such an integral part of everything, is so shrouded in darkness and secrecy. The development went hand in hand with the development of Cassia and Ky's love and Cassia's overall development as a character.

Recently, reading YA fiction has become more and more difficult, and it's not just because of the overuse of similar plots. It's the writing style. As I get older I find that too many YA novels with promising story lines have choppy, overly childish writing styles. I was OVERJOYED to find that the writing in Matched flowed. Eloquent, was a word that came to mind several times as I was reading the book. The writing style was appealing. From the opening sentence to closing one, I just couldn't get enough of it. It was almost simply written. No unnecessary embellishments, the phrase "uuum" didn't come out of Cassia's mouth a million times while she was talking to Ky or Xander and I didn't want to smack her while she was thinking to herself about her situation. Condie got her point across without overdoing it, the beauty was in the simplicity of the style. Cassia wasn't a fluff ball like so many other heroines, but her merits weren't overdone either. Her character -along with all of the other characters- was totally believable. There were so many points in the story where I just couldn't stop myself from rereading a paragraph several times over because what Condie had written, and how she had written it just resonated so strongly.

Exquisite, eloquent and extraordinary are all words that come to mind when describing this book. If those are words that appeal to you then I would definitely suggest this book.