Matched

Matched, by Allyson Braithwaite Condie, is the first novel in the Matched trilogy. The novel is a dystopian YA novel about a tightly-controlled society in which young people are "matched" with their life partners at the age of 17. The main character is seventeen-year-old Cassia Reyes, who is Matched with her best friend, Xander Carrow. However, when viewing the information for her Match, the picture of another young man - Ky Markham, an acquaintance outcast at her school - is flashed across the screen. As Cassia attempts to figure out the source of the mishap, she finds herself conflicted about whether her Match is appropriate for her - and whether the Society is all that it seems to be. This book is followed by Crossed and Reached.

Plot

Seventeen year-old Cassia lives in a futuristic, seemingly utopian Society in which the citizens' lives are strictly controlled by the government - the government decides where they live, where they work, who they care about and even when they die (all citizens die at the age of 80). At the age of seventeen, citizens undergo the process of being "matched"- becoming paired up with another boy/girl selected by the authorities. Typically, young men and women are Matched with someone from another town, sometimes even another province; they generally do not know their Match ahead of time, but are shown their face over a television screen and subsequently provided with a picture and information about the match on a "microcard" - a piece of storage similar to a floppy disk or flash drive. Matched couples are given a period of courtship, and are then married when they turn 21. The system was devised to give couples their best chance at having healthy children. In return, citizens of the Society "live longer and better than any other citizens in the history of the world."