Review : The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

Posted by Kay on June 4, 2013 2:24 am in 3.5 stars reads | 3 comments

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
Pages : 336
Genre : YA, Dystopia
Series : The Testing, book 1
My Rating : 3,5/5

From the back of the book :

My Thoughts :

I had read only a handful of reviews before going in The Testing, most of which mentioned high similarities to The Hunger Games. Still I was really excited to start this new series (as I usually am with every YA dystopia), and for a while I thought it wasn’t too similar. I enjoyed getting to know Cia, her parents, her family, her life. I appreciated her excitement to learn and go to university, to be accepted to the Testing.

Then, around page 150, the last of the four tests Cia has to endure begins. The students are let loose into a dangerous landscape with directions to survive – at whatever cost. Danger looms ahead in the shape of starvation, dehydration, beasts and other candidates. Sounds familiar? Though the context is very different from The Hunger Games, it’s obvious the comparison will be made. Whether this is a dealbreaker or not depends uniquely on the reader; I, for one, still enjoyed the story and the world it was part of. I’m hoping the difference between the two will be made even more obvious with a second novel, taking it to a new direction.

So, what took away from my enjoyment wasn’t really The Testing‘s similarities to another well-known and well-loved series. Mostly it was two quirks in Cia’s narration. First, I felt that she had way too much knowledge. I get it, she is a student and has similar interests to her father’s, and she lives in a world where it is necessary to know what is edible and what isn’t. In fact, in the first few tests, Cia does have weaknesses. But once she was thrown into the last, ultimate test, her knowledge made her story a bit predictable and boring. I can’t count all the times she mentioned “This is X, and as my father taught me…” There is little to surprise her, it seems. All of the other kids seem to have a harder time getting food and surviving.

I could believe she’s simply a genius if, on the other hand, Cia wasn’t completely clueless about the simplest things! So many little twists fall flat because Cia insists on the details, then insists on not knowing what is going on. This specifically in her relations with other people. So I’m supposed to believe that the girl who read so well into the intentions of her classmates in the third test, can’t do so when it’s convenient to the story? Sure…

Also, and this is not a critique but a simply a question : I have to wonder how many students would really choose to kill their classmates in such a setting? Unlike in The Hunger Games, there are no rules that says only one can make it to the end… I don’t know, really, but I like to think only a very few would be so cruel.

I know this review sounds like a big rant, yet I swear I did enjoy reading The Testing! The pace kept me reading, and other than what I mentioned here, I actually liked Cia. She was resourceful and proactive. I think the world Joelle Charbonneau created offers many possibilities for the next book, too – enough to make me want read the next one. The Testing also ends as every book in a series should end, in my opinion: it has a final twist to keep you hanging on for the next book, yet this book’s own story is complete in itself. So I finished reading it feeling mostly satisfied.

In the end, I’d recommend The Testing to readers who are on the constant lookout for new YA dystopia, whether original or not; for those who are on the lookout for something different though, The Testing might be lacking that little spark of novelty.

Series Reading Order :

1. The Testing
2. Independant Study (coming in 2014)

The Testing is available for sale today! Thanks to Houghton Mifflin for generously providing a digital copy of the book for this review.