Matched

by Ally Condie

Seventeen-year-old Cassia Reyes lives in a futuristic, seemingly utopian world in which the citizens' lives are strictly controlled by the government called "The Society." At the age of seventeen, citizens undergo the process of being "matched" or becoming paired up with another boy/girl selected by the sorters (authorities). At the beginning of the novel, Cassia is led to the Match Banquet by her parents. She becomes overjoyed when she realizes that her Match is her best friend, Xander Carrow. Cassia is excited about their future together. When Cassia decides to view the information about Xander, the screen glitches and displays another face: that of Ky Markham, another young man who lives in her borough. Later that day, an official visits Cassia to clarify that Xander is her correct match. The official reveals that Ky is an aberration: a semi-outcast member of society who usually acquires this identity through committing an "Infraction." She tells Cassia that Ky's father committed a serious Infraction, and although Ky was allowed to be adopted by his aunt and uncle at a young age, he had to retain his identity as an aberration and therefore cannot be matched with anyone. Cassia only tells her beloved grandfather, a man nearing his 80th birthday. Her grandfather encourages her to find the words within her and gives her a forbidden piece of paper.

Cassia chooses hiking as her summer recreation activity, and while in the woods she peeks at her grandfather's paper which has two poems that are not in the Society's allotted hundred poems, a dangerous infraction. Coincidentally, Ky Markham has also chosen hiking, and he spots her in the woods reading the paper. He promises to keep her secret and help her destroy the poems after she memorizes them. As he helps her first destroy the poems, then preserve the memory of them, and teaches her how to write words in the dirt, they slowly fall in love with each other. Her growing feelings for Ky make her question her relationship with Xander and the wisdom of the matching system; over time, she grows more and more frustrated with the Society's control over her relationship and her ability to express herself through poetry and writing, which is forbidden. Meanwhile, the Society raids everyone's homes in order to collect meaningful personal items called "artifacts" which they believe promote inequality.

Aware of her feelings for Ky, her official threatens that she will become an aberration and Ky will be sent to the outer provinces if she allows a romantic relationship with Ky to develop. Cassia is administered a final test for becoming a sorter which requires her to sort the most efficient workers at the nutritional disposal plant. She sorts Ky into the highest group even though he might be transferred to another city for a higher level vocation. Cassia and Ky kiss for the first time, but the next day, Officials lead Ky away in handcuffs to the outer provinces to fight against the enemy. The neighborhood is instructed to take their red pills, which erase recent memories, and Cassia discreetly drops hers on the ground and crushes it. The Reyes family is notified of their mandatory relocation to the farmlands. Cassia's official reveals to Cassia that her relationship with Ky was monitored by the Society as an experiment to validate the theory of their matches. She claims to have purposefully put Ky into the matching pool but Cassia suspects she's lying. Later, Xander reveals that the red pill do not work on him or Ky and gives Cassia a large number of blue tablets, which affect her nutrient intake. Cassia is sent to a work camp for showing signs of rebellion. At her parents' request, she is sent to a camp near the Sisyphus river where Cassia believes Ky may have grown up and her family secretly helps her research into where Ky might have been taken.