She says 'that falling in love is a universal theme,' and 'struggling with control is something teens deal with. Matched is assigned reading for incoming students at Simmons College in Boston and Brenau University in Gainesville, Ga. She attributes the growing popularity of her series to teachers and librarians who embraced it. With a laugh, Condie says she expects to 'have about as much involvement as any author who hasn't written Twilight or Harry Potter.' No cast or release date has been set yet.

David Slade ( The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) will direct. She's thrilled that Disney has bought the movie rights to Matched. She recalled a high school prom she chaperoned and imagined 'what if instead of going to a prom, you found out who you were supposed to marry at a banquet, like a prom taken to extremes?'Ĭondie, who quit teaching to raise three sons and a daughter - ages 9,7,4 and 1 - had already read Collins' The Hunger Games, 'which I loved,' but 'I could never write action like Collins does.' She says she was more influenced by older dystopian fiction, George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's short story 'There Will Come Soft Rains.' Four years ago, she and her husband, Scott Condie, were talking about marriage and imagined 'what if the government chose when you married, who you married, and how you married,' she says.Ĭondie, who had written five previous novels for a small Utah publisher, thought it could a great story. It's set in the future when authorities, known as 'The Society,' tell everyone what to read, what to believe and who to marry.Ĭondie, 34, who lives near Provo, Utah, is a former high school English teacher. (Its rebellious heroine Cassia is inspired by Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.) The series - which began with Matched (2010) and includes Crossed (2011) - is a dystopian romance like The Hunger Games, but with less violence and more poetry. 6 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list last Thursday, her best debut and showing on the list. Reached, the third book in Condie's Matched trilogy, published by Penguin, landed at No. Author Ally Condie says a 'casual conversation about marriage' with her husband, an economics professor at Brigham Young University, triggered the most popular series of books for teens since The Hunger Games.

The matched trilogy