This month, I read the book The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau. The book is about a future dystopian society, after a massive war. The United Commonwealth is a country with many colonies and a main city, Tosu City. To qualify for university, the brightest students go to The Testing, when testers go through 4 phases of tests. Some tests are about teamwork, solo skills, education, and finally the forth test is going through a long journey making your way to Tosu City through war ravaged streets, mutant animals, and polluted water. Malencia, known as Cia, makes friends and enemies. Her friends Thomas, Will, and others may betray to survive. I loved the action, it was very much life or death. The book reminded me of the hunger games, with low morales, and a death game at the end. I loved the decisions that Cia has to make with her friends, even though some of them die. My favorite character is Will, as he goes through a lot, and makes a ton of changes. One of his character traits is honest. He says, “You have no idea how good it is to hear someone finally admit they didn’t finish the damn tests.” Nobody else was willing to be honest and say that they didn’t finish the test. The test had way too many questions that everybody else didn’t complete them all. My favorite line is “I blink as the small room fills with a voice that sounds like my own and listen as the voice speaks words I don’t want to believe.” It’s my favorite because it’s a cliffhanger at the end of the story. At the start of the next book in the series, it doesn’t say what it said. This makes the reader make their own story of what it said.
