Reviews - Els testaments | The StoryGraph

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13.2k reviews for:

Els testaments

Margaret Atwood

4.13 AVERAGE

rachelmaire's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

A semi small snapshot of the world in The Handmaids Tale. It doesn't detail the fall but gives an interesting insight into how revolutions start and how how some seemingly irredeemable characters can still do things for the greater good

missdorito's review against another edition

4.0

I don't really know how to rate this book. I really enjoyed it. It was quite the pageturner. So much so, that I ended up reading it all in one go. I loved seeing things from Aunt Lydia's perspective. But apart from her role in things, the story was very predictable. The identity of all the characters was pretty obvious from the get go and the way all the storylines were tied together was a little too neat for my liking. I can see why she would do it, but it made the story less believable. As did the ending.

thebestofles's review against another edition

5.0

This book is everything I hoped it would be - it follows the lives of 3 women (Aunt Lydia, Agnes - a woman who grew up in Gilead, and Daisy - a woman who was smuggled out of Gilead as a child). Because the original Handmaid's Tale is told from the point of view of Offred (a handmaid...obviously), and she's just thrown into this crazy situation out of nowhere, we don't really get a good picture of how or why Gilead came to be, and how it's really functioning. This totally makes sense, because how would Offred know these things? The Testaments makes up for all that lack of detail, by giving us all of Aunt Lydia's knowledge, who we know is a Aunt involved in many of the inner workings of Gilead. One of my favorite things about this book is that it allows the reader to get more involved with Mayday (an underground rebel group that we learn about in the first book - and see a lot in the Hulu show - but don't know all that much about). For those of you wondering, this book does not interfere with the show, as it's set about 10 years after the first Handmaid's Tale book - but I would recommend either reading the first book or watching at least the first 2 seasons of the show before reading this one, to alleviate any confusion with terminology, locations, etc.