Entertainment Weekly has a review of MATCHED in their week of December 10, 2010 issue! Issue number 1132 should be in newsstands right now. :] We’ve also added a high quality scan in our gallery [here].

MATCHED Ally Condie NOVEL There’s a faint whiff of The Hunger Games surrounding the first volume of this young-adult trilogy, which is set in a future dystopian world where the ruing Society dictates its citizens’ lives: where they work, whom they love, even when they die. B

BlurredHistory has a great interview up with Ally that asked a bunch of great new questions

The opening scene of your book describes the matching event, and Cassia has chosen a green dress to wear (which is also on the cover). Green is my favorite color and I love that dress – the story intimates that her choice of color says something about her, but what made you decide her dress should be green?

*I wanted Cassia’s dress to be green for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is very superficial—I wanted it to match her eyes! More importantly, I also liked the symbolism of the color green and its traditional connections with growth, spring, etc. And finally, I liked that it had a connection with the green tablet, which is important to the story.

Check out BlurredHistory for the rest of the interview to find out where the pets are in Matched and a chance to win a copy of Matched!

In Matched, Cassia and the people in The Society have very limited choices – which is part of what makes the dystopian world you’ve created such a scary place to read about. Why is the idea of freedom, specifically freedom of choice, such an important concept to readers? Especially to teen readers?

I think choice is important to all of us, but particularly when you’re young, you are in that strange place of being capable of choosing but often limited–by society, school, family–in which choices you are actually allowed to make. It’s a time of great personal growth and also very limited freedom, which feels constricting.

Visit Novel Novice for the rest of the interview with Ally where she discusses what caused Cassia to mature in “Matched” and a tiny bit of what we can expect in the sequel “Crossed”!

The Telegraph, a UK newspaper, has listed “Matched” by Ally Condie as one of the books to get for Christmas! Check out the rest of the list at The Telegraph.

I did what I could. I won’t lie–I worked very hard on this book and I care about it deeply. But it now belongs to my children, my parents, my husband, my sisters, my brother, the critique-readers, my agent, my editor, the designers, my publicist, the teachers, the librarians,the bloggers, the booksellers, and you.

It now belongs to you.

Read the rest of Ally’s thoughts about today on her official website.

It’s November 30th! Be sure to head out and buy your copy of MATCHED today! (:

On behalf of The-Society.NET, good luck to Ally! I hope others enjoy Matched just as I did. It means a lot to me, and I hope other people feel the same way.

Ally has updated her events page to let us know that she will be at two book release events!

Saturday, December 4, 2010
MATCHED LAUNCH PARTY
2:00 p.m.
The King’s English Bookshop
Salt Lake City, Utah

Tuesday, December 7, 2010
MATCHED BOOK PARTY
7:00 p.m.
Provo Library, Bullock Room
Provo, Utah

We’d love to hear back from people that go to these!

Today Novel Novice gives readers an introduction to “Matched”. Check out their site to read more here!

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed Matched and gave the book nothing but good words! You can read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s review here

The author sent out 25 query letters to agents who would likely represent young adult fiction. Eighteen rejections followed but so did seven offers of representation. Now Condie is working with some of the top names in the business. Disney has bought the movie rights and, just recently, “Matched” was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of 2010.

“It’s been really crazy,” Condie said. “I mean great, but kind of surprising.”

Along those lines, it’s inevitable that “Matched” will be compared to another dystopian trilogy about a girl and two boys, “The Hunger Games.” It’s a flattering comparison, said Condie, who adores the books. But it is a worry, too, she said, “because there’s action in ‘Matched’ but nobody writes action like Suzanne Collins.”

On a lot of levels, “Matched” is the story of one girl learning to choose, Condie said. There’s a lot going on, but a lot of it is personal rather than a grand arena action.

To read more about the inspiration behind “Matched” you can find the whole article at the Deseret News