Watched by society. Trapped by rules. Freed by love.Matched by Ally Condie wasn't the most disappointing book I have read all year, or at least attempted to read as I could not finish it if you paid me, but it was in fact the worst book I have read all year by a country mile.
Cassia lives in the society where everything is basically dictated for you; your daily activities, your work, your food, when you die and most importantly who you love. Everyone at the age of 17 gets the chance to be paired up with someone who is their designated 'match', who they will spend the rest of their life and start a family with. Cassia gets matched with her best friend Xander and everything's perfect until another face appear and then fades to black - who is her true match?
I was totally hooked on the storyline of this book when I first read what it was about, I thought it was wonderfully unique and Condie could do a lot of good work with a starting point such as this. I was totally totally wrong. It starts off by pushing you straight into the deep end, surrounding you in 'society' terminology which isn't even explained at all, I felt extremely confused from the off. This book has no storyline whatsoever, it just plods along with nothing really that interesting ever happening. Cassia's life just seems to be one paranoid day after another, repeating her woes and thoughts on practically every single page. I got bored very easily of reading about how she was worried about this, that and the other, and there seemed to be more time explaining how Cassia felt about everything that was going on in her life (which wasn't a lot) rather than building a decent plot.
The writing was horrendous, and I felt as though I was reading a toddlers book for the majority of what I read. It was ridiculously basic beyond compare, describing mundane things with a list of verbs and repeating 'x says' every time somebody spoke. All she kept going on about was the colours of things, how they were the same as her pills and her dress and other things nobody really cares about. I don't particularly care that the colours of the sky match your pills or the grass matches the colour of your dress, get some storyline and plot and get to the point already.
Another thing that really bugged me, was unnecessary flashbacks. These were added every time something happened, and it was very disconcerting to read as half of the time I didn't know what was and wasn't a flashback to the past. It just wasn't needed in the book and it's as if Condie thought all of the characters motives had to be drawn from something they'd said or done in the past. This brings me to the actual characters, they were boring, lifeless and one dimensional - I didn't feel one iota of anything for them at all. Quite frankly they annoyed me to the bone.
I'm not sure if I'm writing a book review or a rant any more, but I'm pretty sure you get the idea that I absolutely hate this book to the very core of me. It was so bad I couldn't, and didn't want to finish it - I tried my hardest to get past everything but it just wasn't happening.
★