I forgot to manually change the mid-roll ads for this one, so if you had to watch several in the middle of this, I apologize.

“What if love…. was illegal?! 😮” feels like a very out of touch dystopia premise when that’s been the reality for so many people for the bulk of the last few centuries.

At this point I'd rather see the antithesis of the YA dystopia, where the heroine commits war crimes for the government in quelling a rebellion and remains happily married with her state-mandated partner.

How to write a YA dystopia: Step 1: "The world but X is illegal" Step 2: Replace X with a result from a random word generator Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!

Love the point that teen dystopias have the thesis: "society; bottom text"

honestly i should have known from reading this in middle school that i was some type of aro/ace because the entire book i was confused as to why she kept pursuing Ky when she had a perfectly good match in her best friend right there

I want to write one of those awful book too. Let's say... Coats were illegal, and its super cold outside. Can Fea Raincoat oppose the evil regime with her boyfriend Ched Wintermore?

The thing I remember that made me the angriest about this entire series is that, close to the very end it’s revealed her younger brother had to identify dead bodies for money in order to survive. What he went through, was far more harrowing than any of the protagonists, and frankly, much, much more interesting.

I'm surprised how far you went without talking about the people having to carry around the three pills; that was the only part of the book i remembered. As a kid i was pretty shocked by the discovery that the 'emergency nutrients' pill was actually a 'death' pill.

I remember reading the entire series as a kid (for some reason, probably boredom). All I remember of it are two scenes were she gets matched and then something something factory conversation. And then nothing else. I think half the reason why I picked it up in the first place was because the cover was pretty.

I just love how ridiculously contrived the dystopias in these "Hunger Games" ripoffs so often are. They're so nonsensical and cartoonish.

I read this at the same time I read Cinder and i deadass thought those books were the same for years because they both have a main dude named Kai in it.

Me after picking this book up in middle school and reading a third of it before giving up

So I read this series when I was in the psych ward as a teen. I thought it was so beautiful and loved the series. Got a “rage rage against the dying of the light” tattoo bc that poem really spoke to me. Dying @ how bland the series really is. The psych ward meds were strong lmfao

I remember seeing these books in bookstores because of how iconic the covers were at the time. Pretty sure that was the reason for its success.

These videos fascinate me because I worked in my middle school and high school libraries, and I remember all of these books getting checked out and other students gushing over them and just.... Not getting it. Glad to know I wasn't missing out on anything profound. (This is not a superiority thing, to be clear; I read a ton of shameful garbage, it was just garbage horror, not garbage dystopia.)

My favorite dystopian series is the selection. Is it good? No. Did i enjoy it? More than you can imagine. Edit: and now i wanna read matched because i’m a sucker for trashy cw stories. Edit 2: i am commenting as i go, and the 100 limit on things sounds like marie kondo and the whole “i only keep 30 books” thing or whatever in the name of minimalism. Maybe the author was onto something lol Edit 3: i don’t want to read matched anymore

the arc of a Scythe series is probably the best books to come out of the dystopian boom. I think its one of my favorite book series of all time.

This is literally the only book I’ve ever DNF’d. As soon as her second “match” popped up, I knew what the story line would be and how it would end.

Even as a middle-schooler, I came to realize this series was trash and gave up halfway through the second book. I still don’t understand why there was a love triangle at all, it just seemed so forced for the sake of the trope

Never thought that mixing shipping and government could create such a dystopian world.

After Twilight & The Hunger Games, every single published YA book(s) utilized the same tropes: a love triangle, a rebellion stirring, overthrowing a government, or a test of some sort, to the point where it became such an over compensated market. The Selection, The Mortal Instruments, Beautiful Creatures, Throne of Glass, The Infernal Devices, Divergent, The Testing, etc. I hope the YA genre readjusts to original ideas, because I read YA years ago but grew tired of the repetition overtime. The Hunger Games was a stand out IMHO, but my only critique I have is the love triangle they tried to implement really takes me out of the serious themes and messages of the series. "Matched" is a repetitive trope, drawn out for 3 books.

i reread the first two books over lockdown and it was so. they were so Books. when i read them as a kid, i thought they were stupid with how cassia didnt really seem to have any motivations and how nothing in the world is Explained ever. a lot of things clicked, however, upon finding out that the author is mormon. lmao.

There is actually a really good Webtoon called LUFF with a similar premise. There's a mega corporation that has a huge share in lots of different things (like banks, universities etc.) that matches people based on their thumbprints and what percentage of them matches. You're at a societal disadvantage if you don't enter their thumbprint database as in you won't get approved for bank loans and stuff. The main character does it for uni stuff and she has two equally compatible matches. I read it a while ago, but I remember it being really good.

You know the review will be funny when James sounds like a remorseful criminal confessing his devious acts, right at the beginning of the video. Keep the good work!

Dude you look amazing in this beard, hair, shirt, everything

The only thing I really remember about the story of matched (as told to me by my sister) is that they put a lot of focus on the dresses for the matching

I've been binging your videos since I discovered this channel a while ago. I even had a nightmare where James gave my book a bad review.

Tbh assigned marriages still are a thing in some parts of the world and the author might have been writing about that, rather than gay marriage or whatever else James compared the plot too.

Just read Matched, can say for a fact i have no plan in reading the next two. The characters are bland, an the world makes little to no sense. Killing people at eighty with poison yet somehow no one notices this until Cassia? As soon as they said something to the effect of "no one can eat the elderly's food on their last night; it's a law" I knew exactly what was going on, as I'm sure all other readers did. Also... one hundred of everything? This number is so absurd I'm not even going to question it, but....well, nevermind That's my problem with YA dystopian, there are only so many directions you can take it: spaceship, evil government, war, monarchy, etc

I remember reading this book thinking that there was going to be some sort of queer rep or at least something alternative to “two hot boys like me, I live in oppressive dystopia” because I kept thinking there’s no way that a book could be so tone-deaf as to create a world where love is illegal and not even *mention* queer people or anything like that. Alas, I was a naive child who didn’t understand that yes, such books unfortunately exist.

I remember reading a lot of these books (often not completing them) when I was younger bc I hoped for something interesting. I hadn’t read the hunger games until way later, which was kinda cool bc when I did read it I was like “wow the hungers games is a breath of fresh air”

Getting demonitized in the thumbnail for the sake of a well-done visual gag? I respect it. love the videos James, keep it up.

i think the only thing these books had going for them was cool cover design

I too read Matched, back when it first came out. I too have no idea why I read it.

i picked this series up as a kid and i had to reread the last book about 3 times just to vaguely understand it. i thought the writing was just too intelligent and complex for me... yeah it was the complete opposite

I know you gave this as much effort as disserved but I'd really like to see more 'rewriting it better' videos I agree that it is kind of cheap criticism but it is also immensely interesting to think about how series with potential could have been good with as few changes as possible. My brother and I for years have gone over ides of how to make the Star Wars prequels better while sticking to the same themes and most events and I can just never get enough content like this. Much apricated.

There was a book series by Melanie Rawn where the rebel group was called The Rising, but she's a good enough author that given the setting and world building the name fit.

I stopped in the second book when the main character didn't know what dancing was. like tf

If you’re interested in a YA dystopian book that’s somehow even worse than Matched, I highly recommend Bumped. It’s absolutely god awful.

dude i saw this book on my english teacher's shelf (for students to have silent reading time with), i read the back, and i immediately put it back down. glad to know i made the right choice

Nice facial hair. Makes you really look mature. Edit- good take on the book. Really like your general take on dystopian ya fiction

I remember reading Matched in middle school, I thought the first book was fine, but god the last two were such a slog I ended up dropping the series entirely. They couldn't even make me care about the characters enough for me to finish the series like Red Queen did. If you want more pain and suffering try reading the Delirium trilogy if you haven't already. I have yet to get through a third of the first book by hate reading and I just don't think I can do it lol. Really interested in what you'd think of it.

my least favorite series as a teen... and i read like every version of these dystopian things so that's saying something

the beard looks fire on you man

I have never read or heard of Matched, but the premise sounds similar to this anime/manga named Love and Lies, where a matching system decides who should be paired with who (In Love and Lies, starting from childhood you are surveyed to check for your preference, personality, hobbies, etc.) and its supposed to make a healthy, happier relationship between the couples because they are compatible. And I sort of get why the premise would click, there's also a Webtoon with this plot but the girl is matched with two guys.

My problem with both Matched and Delirium is they basically tell the exact same story and they both suck at doing it. Book 1: Haha I'm going to love this person even though the government said I can't. Book 2: Haha I'm going to join this rebellion even though the government said I can't. Book 3: Haha I'm part of this rebellion even though the government said I can't. Did I just describe Matched or Delirium? Who knows? Also I just hate Matched because there was literally no reason Cassia should've fallen in love with Ky. There was no build to their relationship. She just saw his face on the screen and said "oh, okay. I like him." From the book description, I thought she was hoping for Xander to be her match but it ended up being Ky, but it was the other way around.

I remember this book being really popular when I was in middle school and a bunch of friends reading it. I never read it cuz I assumed it was mostly a romance and I hated romance in middle school, I guess that was a good decision

I LOVED Matched growing up, not really sure why, but it made me so happy

I think it's interesting that Matched and Divergent make the same mistake of making their dystopian rule that defines how their society is different from ours kind of half-assedly optional. Like you can choose your faction regardless of the test, so the test feels pointless, and in this you can be with someone you're not matched to and it's not illegal or anything. While we're at it how about a reboot of 1984 where Winston just says no I don't feel like going into the torture room, I want to go home, the guy says right off you go then, just like that Monty Python Meaning of Life skit. I'm calling in sick to the dystopia on Monday.

I read this series and I remember the first one pretty well, she works out a lot, and then her grandpa dies because they kill you once you turn 80 by poisoning the pudding??? And in the second one, she's walking in the desert after running away from the youth labor camp she followed Kye too but he's not there because he also ran away and they find each other in the desert...I truly have no memory of the third book like what the government was doing to cause a rebellion? IDK. Is there a rebellion? No clue! What was the point of any of this? I couldn't tell ya! I wanna note I read this when I had a horrible cold and had taken a lot of cold meds so I truly thought I imagined this entire thing it was that fragmented in its storytelling...During this same illness, I also read a series about a human who is actually a goblin princess and she gets kidnapped back to the goblin world, and they hate her for being so ugly cause they are goblins and she looks like a model and she hates them because they are ugly and she looks like a model and somehow that is also a real book series.

Tbh I'm surprised to hear the series was popular. I've never seen anyone talking about it anywhere online or irl. The only reason I've heard of the series in the first place was because I happened to receive the first book as a christmas present when I was in middle school.

as a child i LOVED the books, and i recently tried to reread the first book and i got about 1/3 of the way through and didn’t even think about it for a week

Matched was the first series I ever stopped reading mid-book. Like, as a kid I prided myself on how many books I would read and how I would stick it out even when they were bad, but iirc it was the last matched book where I found myself just frozen in place halfway through the book, trying to keep reading but I just... couldn't. I was so bored.

Thinking about when I was a youth and I tried to read matched and I got about 20 pages in before I called it quits and this book killed the ya dystopian genre for me 😭😭

I honestly didn't even remember there was a rebellion going on in these books

When I tell you, I got the trilogy as a box set in middle school, and I never got any farther than the chapter AFTER the matching ceremony when the Ky/X glitch happened. Like it was so unreadable and I refused to force myself to attempt it again.

I was super into the YA dystopia craze when it happened- I was the exact right age for it- but with all the weird, obscure ones I read, Matched was one I missed. I actually read it for the first time over the summer as prep work for my senior thesis (it involves YA dystopia) and it was such a trippy experience because it was so bland and not interesting and the characters were just cardboard cutouts of genre stereotypes, but at the same time I was acutely aware that I would have eaten it up if I had read it in middle school. It was a strange experience 😂

9/10 video. -1 point for not enough “we live in a society” jokes (/j)

i have been waiting for a video criticizing this book, i read it in middle school and thought it was so bad😭

You know you’re that series when everyone else tries to be you. Ain’t that right, Hunger Games?

Spoilers Ahead: As someone who tried to read this book, I could not even finish the first one. Even at a time where I was swept up in the dystopia craze, this one was just far too bland for me. I remember there being a whole thing about writing being illegal and the guy she sees on the screen realistically was not even in the running to be "matched" because he was from the outskirts or whatever. There was so much potential to make this story about discrimination, love and loss, and so on. But it was just so bland and boring. They did nothing with it and the parts they did try with were just so convoluted that I don't see any reality in which they would work. Like the whole idea of living until you're 80 and then being killed by the government (after collecting DNA from you that is to be watched after by a family member for some reason?) is just weird. I know this is supposed to be a utopia-like society, but no accidents ever happen? No one has heart attacks or accidentally gets hit by a car or anything at all? I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for certain things, especially in speculative worlds, but when every page brings something that is just so nonsensical, I just can't ignore it anymore.

OMG I never would have expected you to make a video about Matched!! This is a dream come true ToT

it's soooo bad. I tried to get through the series because I'd already bought them 😭 Learned that day to screen my B&N "Editor Picks" more carefully

I don’t remember a whole lot about these books but I DO remember I loved them lmfao. This series and one about a siren girl who had to drive to the middle of nowhere in the woods to sing?? were like the PEAK of writing to me 💀 the whole “we withheld food from you to make you more likely to start a rebellion” think was MIND BLOWING to small me 😭💀 lord have mercy

you do not know how long i have wanted someone to talk about this series i am so EXCITED

I hope you get to read some more stories you might enjoy 😅 I would recommend "The Dispossesed" and the "Earthsea"-Series - both by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lol ifk why you did this either but i appreciate the video - i read this series as a kid and i also idk why i read them all

I have been hoping for this review for a very long time

I remember my librarian recommending me this book in middleschool and it was so shitty 😭😭

Watching this I was thinking about reasons why they would have this system, and I was thinking about countries that have declining population that want to have a not-declining population. Especially if there is a war that would cause population loss. Maybe they think that if they match everyone then they can skip the getting into a relationship part and go straight to having babies, I don’t know how this would work. But since it’s an evil government you could explore themes of the evils of eugenics (as I assume this would maybe be the bases of evil governments matching system) , and a societal disapproval a sex for non-procreation, gay love, infertility, and the such. It might not be a good reason but it would be one

I think I suggested this before when you talked about this book, but here is an idea I had. You take a world where people are matched together and forced to have children under penalty (something like: at this age you must have X children). You have a pair of protagonists, a lesbian woman and a gay man. They are, of course, matched. They become friends and team up to fuck shit up. They find others in similar situations and team up with them as well. We get a full on Rainbow-Revolution. Some of the straight people they include in the revolution have some misguided ideas, which is bad, but understandable under their regime. It could serve as commentary on how we have to deal with "allies", who think they are amazing people but fail to put any research or thought into their support. You could also have the matching happen at a really young age to comment on the habit of "coupling up" children at inappropriate ages that straight people sometimes do (like asking three year old boys if they have a girlfriend). I haven't put much thought into this and I haven't watched this video to completion yet, but I already know my story would be better.

Woah I just saw this recommended to me on the for you page-my middle school years just flashed into my brain and I was not expecting that

i loved reading all these dystopia books when i was younger but i remember finishing this and having no desire to read the sequel at all also i hated the 100 media thing so much

GOD I remember picking this up in fifth grade fresh off reading and loving Hunger Games, and immediately swearing off YA forever Lmao

Hunger doesn't exist, you made that one up, right?

i got the trilogy for like ten dollars at a used book fair last year. my favourite part about these books is that they're nice and heavy, so they're good for pressing and drying flowers.

I think a really good book series is called "power of five" by anthony horowitz.

You have stared into the maw of madness and made it blink. Bless you sir for your sacrifice for our entertainment.

1:38 - 1:44 There’s no more air and ppl had to live in domes and pay for air? Isn’t that just the Lorax movie?

I remember borrowing "Matched" from the school library on a whim in middle school just because I kept seeing the cover and it kept intriguing me. It wasn't the type of book I'd usually read back then (or even now), and I knew from the get-go I wasn't into the premise, but I was just so curious for some reason that it carried me through the whole story and the sequel. I ended up not picking up the third one, but I don't remember why. I did switch from physical school to online around that time, so that would've been a factor. Just can't remember if I decided to stop before that happened, though. Anyway, I was really not into the story just like I thought and I'd probably still not like it if I tried re-reading now, but damn if those covers still don't catch my eyes and make me wanna stare at it forever.

I remember this book coming out, my mom reading it loving it, and I can’t tell you what happened. I don’t even think I finished it? Thank you for your service and validation of my childhood DNF.

I watched this because of the thumbnail, good job on that. The allegory for gay and women's rights, at least the love and choice issues, is obviously the point and forced in a hazy way, through the worldbuilding, to make it digestible without making it really controversial. All of early 2010's YA fiction was like this and I think you're taking it too seriously. Of course the worldbuilding is horrible. It's kids' stuff.

The beard suits you very well, you look great! Just started the video so nothing further to say 😂

Seems to me this is similar to Lauren Oliver's trilogy "Delirium", unlike Matched where love is illegal, in Delirium Love is a disease and they have the Cure.

I remember reading the first one, but almost all the plot escaped my mind.

When i read matched as a kid I saved up spare change to buy the whole series at the book fair but I couldn’t even finish the first one because it was so bad. Everyone forgets about this series glad you covered it!

This has almost the same premise of an anime called *"Koi to Uso"* (Love and Lies). Basically Japan uses science or whatever to match 16-year-olds to their perfect match to decrease the low birth rates. Down to the face flashing for one second and then the guy falling in love with that girl too, it's actually crazy how similar that is (I'd still rather read that manga than this lol)

the one thing i actually liked about this book was the scene where her grandpa died i literally never finished the book and i tried reading it three different times but that one stuck with me

The only thing that had an impact on me in Matched was the inclusion of the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas and the small theme of censorship and book burning

I saw this in a bookstore once when I was younger and was curious about it. Sounds like I didn't miss much. =P

I've been waiting for someone to talk about this series ever since people were going back to old dystopia ya novels!!!

my god, i remember reading these books as they came out, and i thought they were the best books alive. i basically frothed at the mouth when they started explaining the pills in the books

2:45 Laughs hysterically in queer and not-white.

The second book of this series is one of the only books I ever intentionally did not finish. Now it feels like a fever dream, but sth happened that just made me put the book in the back of my bookshelf, never to see the light of day again

core memory from middle school unlocked

James LMFAOOO the random r kelly clip had me cackling lol. The dystopian era was insane what crazy is even as like a 13-year-old I caught on to the game pretty quick. I was a huge hunger games fan and I read half of the selection series but when I read divergent and chocked thru insurgent that's when I was like ok...I'm being baited lol. I remember on the BN site there was a section that said "books like twilight" and books like the hunger games" "what if love was illegal" "what if you could only be in one faction" these things never work. THG worked because the districts were just where they LIVED it wasn't their personality.

Oh my God your video came at the right time. Didn’t watch the video yet but I have to say my piece. I was watching a video where someone was talking about everything wrong with the selection and I thought of this series but couldn’t remember the name. I kept typing on google a girl inside a glas done and getting nothing. The hate I have for this book when I read it in six grade is too much. Now on to watch your review.

I tried so hard to read this book I gave up because I was sick of the poetry and feeling like it was going nowhere.

Never read this series, and from what I heard of it, that was a good thing. It seems like an interesting premise though, and a fix could be that the female lead got paired with the person that her friend liked, and maybe that friend got paired with who she liked. The conflict would be highly personal and that could lead to some interesting events. Anyway, as always it was nice use of time to watch the vid.