To a certain extent lately I have been constantly trying to catch up on my YA reading. As a reader who was in the target audience during the initial YA boom, I've seen some wonderful fiction on the market, and usually like to think I'm up on what's going on. That hasn't necessarily been the case lately between college and the exponential growth of YA options. Despite this, Matched received so much buzz I've felt guilty for not having been able to get around to it (despite the fact dystopias aren't the subgenre I flock to first). 
 I must say I am extremely grateful I read the Hunger Games and Divergent before Matched. If not, I would think that Matched represents what dystopia is in YA currently. Now, obviously the grandfather of all YA dystopia is the Giver (and there has been much buzz among goodreads reviews about how much of the world in Matched is actually derived from that work). I would argue that the current crop of dystopia, while obviously purchased in an effort to reap in some money in wake of the Hunger Games, also goes back to Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series. 
 Dystopias often leave me feeling despondent. After all, they place their characters in horribly restrictive worlds and let them loose. YA dystopia requires a certain suspension of disbelief in that young adults are fighting against these regimes themselves. If anything, dystopias offer higher stakes. They are more likely to produce minute anxiety in me as a reader. And yet, with Matched I didn't really feel anything. The stakes revolved around one person's love life, and Cassia would have been totally content with her lot if she hadn't seen a brief flicker of Ky's image on her match screen. Yes, every story needs an inciting incident. But this is rather weak. 
 It is made weaker by the fact that the relationship with Ky is never fully explained. There really isn't any indication as to why she's drawn to him. One moment of the novel was incredibly self-aware of this. Cassia wonders if she would have been drawn to Ky if she had never seen his face on her screen. There were moments that teased at larger ideas, but never really latched to them. On the other side, Cassia's relationship with Xander is never really flushed out in a full way either. Overall, I'm supposed to be emotionally involved in this love triangle (which I'm kind of over in YA fiction anyway), and I don't care. 
 The novel is centered around Cassia's relationships, and because of this lacks a lot of forward momentum in terms of plot. The stakes just never feel there in the same way as other dystopias. Maybe part of this is Cassia's lack of action. To be fair there is some sense of rebelling here, but it feels very surface level, like it's a factor a dystopian novel is supposed to have so let's get in there. And there is never a clear picture of what is being rebelled against. Yes, Cassia does not have a full view of her world based on the fact that so much information is kept under lock and key, but the world created for the reader could ultimately be so much more vivid than it is. 
 I'm not really sure how I would classify this book. It's set in a dystopian world, but it feels somewhat half-baked there. I wouldn't call it a romance as we don't really see that much development in the relationships, and honestly the males are kind of flat as characters. It's a good, quick, average YA read. In the end, I was let down by all the hype surrounding the book. 
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