Cover Appreciation: The Matched Series by Ally Condle
In the Society, officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die. Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion. (Matched, Goodreads)
I read this in High School and I remember liking it but not enough to finish the series. (I read books 1 and 2 but not 3 -- even though that’s the only one i own) However, I kinda love these covers, particularly the first one. The neon-lime green is really eye-catching and the dress and stance perfectly encapsulate what happens in-story.
Images two and three are also very fitting. Book 2 is basically them fighting back and breaking away and (I’m guessing) that book three is the MC rising from the ashes of her former life and walking free.
My biggest annoyances with these covers are the differences in the gray backgrounds, as well as the slight descent of the orb in Reached to accommodate her standing up. I wish the orbs were in the same spot in the first two.
There are also versions where the backgrounds match (ha!) the color of her dress instead of the bubbles.
I think this works well for book 1, but I don’t think it works well with books 2 and 3. Both color-wise and symbolically. I think this is because the gray background makes it seem like she’s stepping out into a blank expanse where she can become anything she wants to be. Whereas with the colored backgrounds she’s merely stepping out into the color that she’s already wearing.
I also don’t like the cloudy look of the title text in the second versions.
The foreign covers weren’t very different than the original and I’m always curious why they change what they do when switching over. My favorite foreign reworked covers are the German ones:
Although I don’t actually like them as a whole . . . or as separate entities much either. The washed-outness of 1 and 3 bother me. 2 looks pretty saturated. I wonder if this is just an issue with the online pictures. Again, I wish I knew what they look like in person (though not as much as my favorite foreign Twilights. The switching around of the title text color is weird and mismatched as well.
Overall, I think the original covers are the best. ;)
- Kiara
