Spoilers for Matched, and I guess really general spoilers for Twilight, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games (who ends up with whom)
abound. Also, there’s a brief mention of a Harry
Potter shipping that often irritates people who love the epilogue. Be
warned.
It’s almost midnight and I have to go to
bed, but I just wanted to address the love triangle. It was really well done. I
initially used the phrase ‘romance triangle’ throughout this but, given the
fact that she does love one of the guys and at least believes that she is in
love with the other, it qualifies as being genuinely based on love.
A lot of books try to set up a triangle but
the romantic interests are either idealised or it’s obvious what the
protagonist’s eventual choice will be. Twilight?
Reading it, it was obvious that Bella was set on Edward and would never change
her mind. Harry Potter? I’m a major
Harmione shipper but from book three or four onwards it was clear where it was
going. (It doesn’t really count as a romance triangle, but I don’t care) The Hunger Games? Okay, there was a
possibility that Katniss would choose Gale, but after sharing the games with
Peeta, and thus the readers knowing his character so much more than we know
Gale’s, the chances were that she was going to stay with Peeta.
The great thing about the love triangle in Matched was that the guys weren’t
perfect but you could see why she could choose either one of them. It took me a
while to start to particularly like Ky, and I’m still rooting for Xander
because his character fascinates me and I think that I would have definitely
chosen him had I been Cassia, but they are both great guys and you can see why
she feels connected to both of them. Who wouldn’t feel lucky, despite the
feeling of missing out on the experience of meeting your Match the traditional
way, if the person that you were going to spend the rest of your life with was
your best friend instead of a complete stranger? Who wouldn’t feel connection
to the boy that taught you to write and opened a new world to you, even if you
weren’t in love with him like Cassia grew to be? Even though it seems certain
that she and Ky are endgame and I can’t see her ending up with Xander after it’s
been established that she loves Xander but is in love with Ky, it was nice that
she said how looking for Ky and seeking to override the system doesn’t mean
that she’s definitively choosing Ky; she’s choosing having the possibility of
choosing either way. And the theme of freedom and choice is part of what makes
the book beautiful and what makes the love triangle so lovely. It’s not just an
element thrown in there for drama or to add another element or to appeal to more
readers or to entice girls wanting someone to fangirl over. The reason that the
book seemed to focus so much on character interactions and not on plot is that
the character interactions are fundamental to the plot. Without all of the
scenes between Cassia and Ky, Cassia wouldn’t have grown to care about someone
in the situation that he is in and would never have understood what her
grandfather meant by “do not go gentle”.
Without the realisation that she was falling for the great guy that she wasn’t allowed
to be with instead of the great guy that she was supposed to be with, Cassia
never would have questioned why they never get a choice, never would have found
out about the poison and the war, and never would have realised the necessity
of action.
I'm really looking forward to reading the next book in this series and am rather curious about the time that Xander remembers people taking the red pill and why the red pills don't work on Xander and Ky.
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