the funniest thing about this book to me is that it implies that people will encounter no health problems until they reach 80. because that's definitely how the human body operates
They probably do and just don't mention them because admitting to that in public would seem shameful. Also what you're saying isn't exactly true. In the first book one of the people is implied to have an anxiety disorder that they could get in trouble for self-medicating, and during the last book, there's a pandemic. I agree that the series, especially the sequels, isn't that well written, but this is just plain incorrect.
@@Fairygoblet these books really suck then huh. Unless I’m missing something, an anxiety disorder one can get in trouble for self-medicating definitely conflicts with the fact that everyone has anxiety pills 😂
The thing that stuck with me most about this book is that the songs were all made with artificial voices and they even added breathing noises into the songs to make them sound like real humans. It only struck me when I remembered this fact years later that she's describing vocaloids. And it's just so funny to me now that it's described as such a dystopian thing and it's just hatsune miku 😭😭😭
To be fair if the government was so anti-creativity that it made Hatsune Miku the ONLY singer because she’s fake and also under their control, that would actually be very dystopian, and putting a cute waifu face on it would just make that worse.
Okay, to play devil’s advocate: I think the idea would be better compared to AI-generated songs. Like, what the author was going for was that government wanted for them to *think* human creativity was behind the music, even though it was soulless slop.
I remember reading like two chapters and realizing she was gonna end up with the weird stranger instead of her sweet best friend and putting the book down never to be picked up again. I was a very particular child 😭
i love bad dystopian novels because theres always a Noun. like a capital letter Noun that means something is so very important. i am so happy to see you show the text of the book as you read and confirm to me that there will usually be so many Nouns in like just one paragraph
@@flamegobrrrr6010 The Capitol, the Meadows, the Seam, Careers, off the top of my head - I know I reread it recently and it was still fantastic but I kept going “NOT THE NOUNS” in the beginning lol
@@flamegobrrrr6010I didn’t realize how many Nouns there were in the Hunger Games. I guess it just felt more natural than other dystopian books, like they really felt like slang they adopted over time.
Off topic, but i was in dairyqueen the other day and this older lady started talking about her fannypack "i know people call it a fannypack, but I call it my strap on. Because it has a strap." Mind you she's talking to her grandchild. Anyways
Glad you brought up the cover design as it’s single pro - it rly grabbed my limited middle schooler attention, and the cover art for the sequel, Crossed, where a girl punches and crawls out of a glass cracked orb, was even more compelling to my little dramatic weeb heart. Despite that, I could never bring myself to read it - even at the time, I could tell it was a cheap Uglies or Hunger Games knockoff. Plus I really struggled to complete books due to my ADHD, so I didn’t bother with books that didn’t grab my interest in the first chapter
I got super into books because of my adhd and had to finish the series. I had a really low bar for thinking books were good and even at 14 i was like wtf is this shit
I actually really liked this series and I read it in 8th grade 😭 I never read The Hunger Games, but i was a big fan of The Giver series, and i think that inspired it more than THG ironically, that’s the same year i got finally diagnosed with my chronic illness. i probably wouldn’t be able to read it now for the same reason I wasn’t able to reread The Lunar Chronicles (the ableism and eugenics is quite triggering)
I hate most of the books I had to read for school, mainly bc the story was in no way interesting to a kid and it sucks bc I really love reading but the books are SO DAMN BAD OR BORING that I'd just dnf all of them
💯. I live in the UK (and I went to different schools across the years) so the selection might be different but a lot of the books weren't necessarily bad (we read Christmas Carol + Romeo and Julliet in yr7, Animal farm + I am Malala yr8, Of Mice and men + Lord of the flies (+ Midsummer's night dream in one of my schools) Yr9 and for GCSE (Yr10-Yr11) we did inspector calls, Jekyll and Hyde and then Merchant of Venice) I think the over-analysation is what made them kinda boring for me (though I loved the storyline of inspector calls and Jekyll and Hyde) and I won't go back and read any of them for that reason. I can't just read it without over-analysing and interpreting things or pointing out which literary devices were used lol and it's made reading for fun not seem like fun.
@@softbutterfly_xoxosee as a uk girlie i loved most of the books we were given and read ahead a lot which made class so boring cause i was like girl i already know thissss haha, but i think that’s because they were mostly classics which are ofc tried a d tested. We did also have to read noughts a d crosses which i get was trying to make a point about racism but i really truly think there were way more interesting books on that topic that werent cringy YA you had to read with your teacher lol
@@softbutterfly_xoxo brooo I love de Jekyll and Mr Hyde so much the hyperfixation was so real that I discovered a webcomic called “the glass scientist” I’d seriously recommend it I really mean it And I even used it to inspire my scientist OC I love the animatics for confrontation (from the musical ) because the song is SO powerful TLDR: I love dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
OMG I READ THIS BOOK. so a bit of history. i was poor and my only hobby really was reading. i loved to read and i stole a lot of books from teachers and libraries INCLUDING THIS ENTIRE SERIES. one summer i read the series and it was so cheeks. the second one was really bland and the third one had me pissed. the ending was that a rebellious group outside of the society brought a virus to the society that they were immune to but the rest werent and it was a bit uncertain .
Oh my gosh, I remember reading this book in middle school!! I think it was such a bizarre fever dream of a book that I repressed the memory…just seeing it on screen gave me such a visceral reaction lol
When I read this book as a kid it filled me with a hatred I didn’t know was possible. I read the of the series out of pure spite. I fully believe it started my love for torturing myself with terrible books😂
HATER NATION!!1!1! Also how the hell does someone get a book like this written, approved, and published without realizing it’s literallly just eugenics like 💀
I clicked on this video so fast. I've seen nobody talk about Matched on RU-vid, so I'm pumped that someone's talking about this book that also annoyed me when I first read it in middle school. I also had to read it for a book report in my seventh grade English class. I think we were assigned to write a report for dystopian books that our teacher specifically choose for us, like she had three options and we had to choose one. I read Unwind (which was pretty enjoyable and a lot more original, from what I remember), then I chose Matched once I finished Unwind (the teacher let us have a chance to read the other book options she had), and I couldn't even finish it.
I remember liking this book when I read it in school, but by the third book I could NOT care anymore. I hate dropping things so I tried my best to get to the end, but kept forgetting what happened, who was who, etc. which never happens. So thanks, Matched (book 3 whose name i forgor) for being one of maybe 5 books I've dropped in my life. Insane how this got a six figure auction.
i, too, had to read this book when i was in middle school. the only thing i remember, that i think about to this day, is that everyone gets their individual food from a conveyor belt in their basement or something? and the fbi agent admits to cassia in the end that they gave her less and less food so that she becomes malnourished for the experiment to be more interesting? 13 year old me was so impressed, i dont know
I also read this book in middle school and reread it recently out of curiosity. Most of the YA dystopia worldbuilding outside the Hunger Games was pretty trash, but this one was just so unmemorable and toothless. We’ve got eugenics and euthanasia, but the real issue is whether or not you really love your government assigned boyfriend (which the author didn’t even commit to because the one who isn’t Ky barely has any speaking lines). We’ve got government surveillance of your dreams for thought crimes, but the girl can wander around the city unsupervised and throw contraband out easily. We’ve got mass censorship of art and history, but more time and drama is dedicated to The Society forcibly cutting down the trees in the MC’s front yard. And then the fact that most of the run time is just talking while hiking, again a convenient way for them to talk alone that doesn’t make sense with the rest of the “strict” control. Heck I reread this less than a year ago and i didn’t even remember the dream thing it mattered so little.
I love that you're doing this 😭 "Matched" was my absolute favorite book when I was in third grade, and I still had a copy of it over quarantine so I decided to reread it... man, as soon as I read that "I smiled at my foolish imagination. There are no angels" bullshit I had to give up 😅
i actually read (or tried to read) the whole series and the third book gets so terrible i couldn’t even finish it. and that really says something because back then i was able to put up with the most horrendous of shit with no problems whatsoever. like honestly, why did they think it was okay to publish this actually 💀
This book came out in the Hunger Games clone craze, but it reminds me more of The Giver. But whereas The Giver focused on the deprivation of personal relationships and appreciation of life for life’s sake (and not what a life can do for society as a whole), Matched is just about, like Which Boy Likes Me More, and it thinks it can get away with that being its whole identity, and not being philosophically interesting outside of that. Which is fine, I suppose, it would be wrong to censor it, but there’s a reason The Giver is in middle school English curricula and Matched isn’t.
i had to read this book in middle school called “uglies” which was just as if not worse than this book (which i also read lmao 💀💀) and the concept was that everyone got like hella plastic surgery on their sixteenth birthday because that would “guarantee no societal conflict”. the flashbacks this video gave me to those types of books. 😭😭
Hey now let's not compare this piece of shit to the uglies. The ugliest had actual social commentary(like dystopia is supposed to) this book was just what if the giver but love triangle
Praying you talk about the Uglies books by Westerfeld (idr how to spell his name). Matched was bad, but these books were so goddamn awful that I still remember a fair bit of what happens in them
@@rigelestbit It had the most unlikeable main character I'd ever read at the time. Like, how am I supposed to root for this person? SHE'S FOR THE STREETS DAWG
i remember reading this book back in middle school too, but it was such a nothing burger that i read through like half of it then never touched it again lmao
I read the first 5 chapters.. and never again.. I told my English teacher at the time(8th grade) that I stopped reading it and she said it was a good book.. 😭
i had to read this book in 6th grade as a part of a unit on "dystopian fiction"-- we were all put into groups and assigned different books. other ppl got to read The Giver and Uglies but i had to read THIS. i ended up enjoying it a lot, but i was 11. i kinda enjoyed everything. i remember my sister (who read the entire trilogy before me) telling me that X in "Xander" was pronounced in the same way the X in "Xavier" is pronounced and that pissed me off. i hated xander so fucking much that i made an entire website detailing why ky was better. since then ive encountered characters i hated WAY MORE, but never to the point of coding and designing a whole webpage💀
In my HIGH-school, this book is on one of the display tables, meaning that my school's library thinks it's a good book. I just think that's funny. Edit- I wonder if I should check it out and read it to see how quickly I drop it. Edit 2- Just got the book, I'll update you guys about how fast I dropped it and my opinion on it Edit 3- I stopped reading it because I got bored of it and forgot about it. I stopped at page 17. Here is what I wrote. 4 pages in- what is this dialogue? ""You lie." he teases..." Okay, Zim, but this isn't the worst dialogue yet. I don't know if I'm beinh nitpickey, but this sentence is just off to me. 5- "...I am small." Oh. 11- "I swallow in surprise, and for a second, I feel an unexpected surge of anger: I didn't get to savor my last bite of cake." Nothing inherently wrong with this line, I'm just worried that this is leading her to the path of "quirky" main character. 17- Her internal monolog is so cringe, I'm disintegrating. I can't tell you a good opinion. It's cringe and very telling of it's time.
The same thing happened to me, that book was so ridiculous. Did I read the whole series? Yes. Did I hate it? Also yes. Glad a lot of people feel the same LOL
No. An aberration is somebody who committed just a little crime, or is a family member of somebody who committed a serious crime, because family members can get punished in this place ,like North korea. Ky is one because his parents did something that I don't remember, and he lives with his wealthy aunt and uncle who wanted to take him in because they lost their own baby, and this Society let them because the loss of a child is so rare there. The thing about this series is that the first book is okay and the later books offer some interesting twists, but the further you get into the series the less believable it is overall.
I want to thank you for making this, because ive been trying to muddle my way through the first book, and because of my trouble these days in getting into the right headspace for really reading, i couldn't tell if i didn't like the book or i was just picking it up at all the wrong times. This allowed me to realize it might be the former and having picked it up again with less enthusiasm for reading every word i have come to the conclusion that i do not like it, and this has allowed me to clear up three very large books from my overstuffed bookshelf (i got them all for free). So thank you for making me realize, this book is boring actually. Edit:and very bad. I should probably add that i agree they are very bad
This book was in a small library in one of my english classes, it sounded dumb as hell and didn't even bother reading past the first couple pages. had a very fun time watching this
You know what’s crazy I read all the books in this series because we had a read for points system in 6th grade and this series gave me like a whole 9 weeks of points so I read them, and being the hustler I was I had people give me their lunch or whatever and I would sit behind them and tap the desk for the answers since they were all A-D quizzes for the points and I remember like 5% of the plot now. This video was great thanks for making it
"I can barely remember what I just read and my notes are bad, But-" girl you killed it. I saw that bomb ass cover in the Barnes & Noble when I was 13 and CHOSE to PURCHASE and READ it. I forgot so much and you brought the memories flooding back. Thank you?
This book series made me SO MAD when I was younger. I read it in elementary/early middle school. I really enjoyed the first book (I have no idea why I liked it, I think I was delusional), and so I read the second book. And I was so bored, and confused, and annoyed with it. But I thought, “hey, maybe the author will bring it back in the last book.” And then I read the last book. I hated it SO MUCH. It was executed so poorly, on every single level. The secret, rebel society thing came out of nowhere at the end, she didn’t really build on it at all. She didn’t do anything interesting with it, she didn’t expand on anything, and then at the end she tried to do The Hunger Games thing where it’s like “the rebel society was also bad!” Except it had no impact because AGAIN, she didn’t build on it, and we didn’t have any reason to really trust in or believe in the rebel society in the first place. It just felt so stupid and contrived and frustrating. I remember thinking that it really just felt like she was writing down whatever she thought was going to make the book more interesting without putting the actual work in to making it interesting. The relationships weren’t interesting by the end, if they ever even were. I was also creeped out by Xander ending up with what I assumed was a much older woman, if I remember correctly. I hate this series. You have no idea how excited I got when I found this video. I’ve been complaining about these books for years, and finally there’s someone on RU-vid also complaining about them! Or at least the first one.
11:40 Providing some context about this poem: If you think it's repetitive, you're 100% right. The form is called a villanelle, and they're notoriously difficult due to their demanding repetition and rhyme scheme. Dylan Thomas did not deserve the hell this book put his poem through (not after the hell just writing a villanelle probably put him through). (Jkjk I love villanelles, even though they hurt my brain.)
This series was wasted potential. I liked the first book, I found it entertaining and the concept seemed interesting, even though it is super dated and I read it in 2020. Then the second book happened and I was soooo boreddddd. I realized the characters had zero personality since I kept confusing their voices everytime the pov changed, and the plot went anywhere til the last 40 pages and I read the third book just because I didn't want to have a series unfinished, boring as well, with some good quotes here and there but overall bad.
Tbh when i read this as a middle schooler i really liked the series even though it didn't make much sense 😂😂i read fanfiction so i was just along for the ride
I won a free copy of this book in middle school because i drew a bookmark or something Met the author and everything And then i proceeded to put the book at the back of my closet and go back to my Percy Jackson books because i literally only entered the contest for the free pizza 🙂↕️ I'm just a boy ❤💖🎀
I’ve use to read a lot similar books series during this time in elementary/middle school. 🤧 Never read this series, but I always enjoy hearing about the books that I haven’t read from this Era. 🙌📚
I definitely read this one when I was devouring every YA book I could get my grubby little teen hands on. I know I started reading the second, don't remember if even I finished it but I DEFINITELY didn't bother with the third. And I had an incredibly high slop tolerance, so you know it's bad lol
This love triangle not being solved by polyamory is CRAZY. She's been scientifically determined to be a perfect match for multiple men, and they're both a perfect match for her, and for some reason she has to choose???? For some reason???? Bullshit.
the premise reminded me of a webtoon named luff or smthng like that, but uh it's actually good. The goverment of this country has this matching system that pairs people based on percentage of like compatibility or something, I don't remember. So people tend to marry the one who have a higher percentage with, also not a single person had gotten 2 people with the same compatibility percentage... until it happens. The story is really interesting and goood, i recomend :3 (pardon my english)
the first sentence of my college personal statement was about how I opened this book up in 6th grade read it for a few minutes and then immediately put it back in my bookbag and returned it the next day. Coming off of the Shadow Children series to that mess was a trip.
About these pills; you're telling me that everyone has 3 pills in their pouches, and nobody knows what the red one does? Nah, 3% of every population has a "what's this button do?" personality and another 5% would eat it for $20. That does it. The magic is ruined for me!
I don’t remember much from this, but I do remember him teaching her how to write because they switched to digital and typing only. I also remember them regulating your food and exercise
the only thing i remember about this book series was people using its basic setting for shipping fanfiction which i could never take seriously because id just go "WHY WOULD THE GOVERNMENT DOING THIS WEIRD EUGENICS BREEDING PROGRAM PAIR UP GUYS WITH GUYS" and the fact in the...i think last book the fact someone actually complained about the rebellion and was like "this is stupid i hate you all get off my yard" after it was over made me go "wow! thats realistic!" and so it stuck with me
I didn’t know I could hate anything so much until this book. I’m glad ppl who read it agree, bc ppl who didn’t just laugh at how annoyed I get talking about it. I read Hunger games and Divergent, then saw this as the next dystopian novel I’d read… but the plot and characters were just so infuriating 😭
This book cover triggered a memory I had totally forgotten about. I read that book too in, I think, middle school. But the only thing I remember about it was people dying when they were 80 bc I thought that was dumb.
No bc I, also as an avid Hunger Games fan, bought this book at a thrift store when I was in eight grade and it pissed me off so consistently that I threw it at a wall several times while reading it. You're a different kind of brave to read it a second time.
This is exactly why you shouldn’t use placeholder names in your writing. Name your country!!! OR ELSE YOU SOUND LIKE THIS AND IT NEVER GETS FIXED. you just never decide
Between this and The Selection and a whole slew of nothing but YA Dystopia shlop coming out, it all made me stop reading for YEARS. Luckily I had discovered Terry Pratchett when I was young so I still could maintain my reading comprehension, but teen girls in the 2010s were really out here with nothing but garbage for nearly a decade.
Oh man. I think I still have this book somewhere. I read it in middle school because I was bored and depressed and had few friends, and my imagination made the book much better than it was. The case for many books I read, frankly.
i loveddd this series as a child😂but even then, i thought the books got a little worse with each addition to the series. this makes me wanna try and reread them, see how much i’ve evolved since then lol!
I'll never live down reading this series in my early teens and liking it purely because I projected myself and my very unrequited crush onto the main characters
stop!!! i literally read this book in 5th grade and chose it from the scholastic book fair ad and so im painfully attached to it even though i know that its awful AHHH
