“The Testing” by Joelle Charbonneau is a book about a girl named Malencia “Cia” Vale who is chosen for something called the testing. The Testing is an action/adventure book and is the first book of a series.
The book is set in a post-apocalyptic setting where everyone cooperates together to form the United Commonwealth. The story takes place in the five lakes colony. Cia was chosen right after graduating from school along with her classmates, Tomas, Zandri, and Malachi. Tomas is someone that she always has had a crush on. Cia is set to go to the Testing until her father, an alumnus of the Testing tells her about how he vaguely remembers screams, explosions, and death in the Testing. He tells her one very important thing-trust no one. Cia brings a Transit communicator, a similar invention to the walkie talkie, with her in case she might need it.
Cia notices hidden cameras watching their every move and shares the information with Tomas. Once in Tosu City, they meet the other 108 candidates fighting for the 20 open seats at the university. At dinner, Cia meets Will and Gill two twins that were invited for the testing. The first round of the testing is a number of written exams that Cia feels she performed fairly well on. Gill did not come back from the end of the written test, while everyone else she knew passed.
The second round of testing is a series of deadly hands-on activities. One of the activities is identifying poisonous and non-poisonous plants and eating all the non-poisonous ones. After seeing how high the stakes are something snaps in Cia.
The third round of testing was a group problem-solving activity. While Cia waits for her turn she realizes that her teammate, Roman, betrayed them and sprung a trap for them. Though it was too late to save one person she was able to save one of her teammates, Brick.
The 4th round of testing is a survival challenge, Each person has to go from the ruins of Chicago to Tosu City by any means possible. Cia and Tomas survive the 4th round but, hate Will now because he betrayed them and tried to kill them all. Cia records all the horrors of the Testing for herself in the Transit communicator. Then she is wiped off of her memory and accepted into the University. Later on her birthday she accidentally plays the message and relearns what happened at the Testing.
“The Testing” is extremely engaging and is an extremely exciting action/adventure novel. The 4th round of testing is just expanded so wide and filled with unnecessary action. The mutated humans were completely unnecessary, they were just there to make it more action packed. The book is just action and more action. So much happens at once at the end but, in the first half, the book is all introduction. The book has so much introduction that all the action has to be stuffed in at once. The book does have an excuse since it is a start of a series it has to introduce a series and still be interesting. Other than that the book is very good. I would rate the book 4 out of 5 stars.