Book Review- Matched

I just finished reading Matched by Ally Condie for an Around the World Tour.

From Goodreads:

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.
 
Wow, can you imagine living in a world where everything is decided for you?  What you wear, what your job is, who you love, the age that you can have kids by, what you eat, when you die.  Ally Condie paints this world in such vivid words that you can perfectly imagine it.  And it's slightly creepy.  I don't think I would do well in a world where everything is decided for you and you have almost no choices. 
 
I really enjoyed all of the characters in the story.  I love how Cassia grows so much from the beginning of the story until the end of the story when she is questioning the ways of the Society.  And Xander and Ky are both such great guys.  Usually in stories where the girl is trying to decide between two boys, I find myself leaning towards liking one boy more than the other.  But not so in Matched.  I think I liked Xander and Ky equally.  None of them had any bad qualities. 
 
If I had one complaint about this book, its that the middle got a little slow for me.  I think it plod along and some of the story could have been told quicker.  That being said, the ending definitely left me wondering what happens next.  I have no idea if there is a sequel to this book, but I sure hope there is one!
 
Oh, and side note, I really love the cover of this book.  The girl in a green dress in the bubble just really caught my eye!
 
I gave this book a rating of 4/5.
 
Matched will be released on November 30, 2010.
 
I gave this book a rating of 4/5.
 
This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2010 100+ Reading Challenge: 80
2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 60
ARC Reading Challenge 2010: 58
 
*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review as part of the Around the World Tours.