The Testing by Joelle Charbinneau

So this book is dystopian and in this world, once you've graduated from school you have the opportunity to be chosen for the testing and if you are one of the very lucky few who pass it, you are then given the privilege to attend university. We follow a young girl named Cia who wants to be selected to go so badly and she is. (Not a spoiler it actually happens pretty early.) The rest of the book is about her trying to pass and also trying to find out the truth about how they are being tested.

I had several problems with this book. Lets start off with the characters. There were a couple of interesting people in it but the thing was that many of them were only in a couple short chapters. Her dad and brothers seemed really cool but we didn't see much of them. Cia herself I thought was really boring (more on that next) and I found that I didn't care about her as much as I should have. The only other characters I thought were interesting were Tomas, her friend/love interest, and Will, her friend/other testing contestant but they only seemed interesting toward the end of the book and I doubt that we get find out more about them in the next book.

Cia was probably my main problem here. The thing is she's NEVER wrong. All contestants were thrown into this situation with no prior knowledge about what was going to happen and yet she doesn't make a wrong move. Her instincts were always right even in the moments she should have completely failed. I thought it actually took away from her character because we didn't get to see how she handled a situation that went totally wrong. I find that flaws in characters make them more realistic and that flaws in people make them more interesting. Can you imagine a world in which everyone was perfect? Where no one had flaws? That would be so BORING. Besides that, perfect's overrated.

Quick side note that really annoyed me was that Cia and Tomas had really only known each other for a month and a half at most and they were already saying "I love you." I don't think that the word "love" should be thrown around like that. Keep in mind they're like sixteen.

Going into this book I knew that there were some similarities between this and "The Hunger Games" maybe you've heard of it? I was expecting a few small details but boy was I wrong. It really isn't until half way that I realized how many there was. I think it was one main turning point that I thought was almost a blatant rip off from that point. Actually, that may be too harsh but you know, lack of better terms. And the thing is, the parts that I really drew parallels with I thought were unnecessary in The Testing. They were small details but they were the details that I remember so they stand out. Now I will always defend The Hunger Games because it was the series that got me into reading, but come on! Some of the similarities cannot be coincidences. I think an author shouldn't want they're work to be compared to someone else's; they should want they're work to be known in its own right.

All in all, I can't bring myself to call this book terrible or even bad. I have definitely read other books that I've liked even less than this. I do prefer it to many other books. Some characters were interesting but we didn't get to explore them as much as I would have liked. Really, I think it was mainly lacking in character development and in originality which honestly killed the novel for me. 2 out of 5 stars.