Tuesday, August 24, 2010

PFL: Matched by Ally Condie

There are many different memes out there for bloggers to feature the books they're really, really looking forward to. Unfortunately, none of them really meet my needs as I tend to find books I consider my possible future loves in droves rather than one at a time. And I don't feel like featuring those books in droves either. When I fall for a book before its pub date, that usually means something! That means, from now on, you will occasionally (or for the next few weeks: quite some days) find this new feature here.



Matched by Ally Condie
November 30, 2010

In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic.



Apart from the pretty, pretty cover, the biggest turn on for me was the fact that the main character, Cassia, has to decide whether to stick to society's urge for perfection or to go for her own passion. For those who don't know it (yet), one of my minors at university is comparative religion and I have a soft spot for everything and anything about Judaism. There, especially among the orthodox branches, matchmaking (shidduch) is a very important part of finding The One - and it is all based on family, upbringing, health and religious life (among other things). So I am always curious how matchmaking works in other, even fictional, societies. And then, there's the aspect of a dystopia! Oh my, three big reasons for reading this book!



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