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hekate24 's review for:
The Testing
by Joelle Charbonneau
Extremely pedestrian writing. More so than some other dystopian YA I've read. It also seemed very paint-by-numbers in some ways, especially regarding the love interest for 90% of the book.
That being said, this was a page-turner and the world-building was generally better than most books of this type (looking at you, Divergent! and Hunger Games to a lesser extent.) I liked that, for the most part, people in the colonies were generally just going about their daily lives. There were some dystopian aspects, but nothing that hit you over the head until Cia gets to the testing. And the testing had vibes of the Milgram experiment, too, so that made it a lot more interesting than DUR HUR LET'S JUMP OFF A TRAIN BECAUSE!!! WE LIKE ADRENALINE!!!! (wow, I don't have good memories of Divergent.)
Cia is a great main character, too. I stuck through this book mostly for her, to be honest. You get a sense of her ethics, and how her family/community has shaped them. She's kind in a believable way, and appealingly proactive
So yeah. The book was worth reading for Cia and for the psychological effects of the worldbuilding. There were some moments that were incredibly trite and cliched, and whenever they popped up they took me out of the book. Buuuut the author made some interesting choices towards the end there, and I hope she stuck with them in the sequel.
That being said, this was a page-turner and the world-building was generally better than most books of this type (looking at you, Divergent! and Hunger Games to a lesser extent.) I liked that, for the most part, people in the colonies were generally just going about their daily lives. There were some dystopian aspects, but nothing that hit you over the head until Cia gets to the testing. And the testing had vibes of the Milgram experiment, too, so that made it a lot more interesting than DUR HUR LET'S JUMP OFF A TRAIN BECAUSE!!! WE LIKE ADRENALINE!!!! (wow, I don't have good memories of Divergent.)
Cia is a great main character, too. I stuck through this book mostly for her, to be honest. You get a sense of her ethics, and how her family/community has shaped them. She's kind in a believable way, and appealingly proactive
So yeah. The book was worth reading for Cia and for the psychological effects of the worldbuilding. There were some moments that were incredibly trite and cliched, and whenever they popped up they took me out of the book. Buuuut the author made some interesting choices towards the end there, and I hope she stuck with them in the sequel.