GoodRead - The Testing

After reading The Guest Cat over a very short period of time (while I was away of holiday), I asked Twitter if I should read this or if I should read The Bone Season. Twitter, to my surprise, told me to read The Testing. Whenever I ask Twitter to pick my next read, you guys always surprise me...

Every year, the United Commonwealth invites the top students from each colony to take part in The Testing. If you are successful, you go onto University and, after that, help the Government rebuild the war-stricken world. If you failed... best not thinking about.

Cia Vale is one of the successful students going to take part in The Testing. But her father gives her one warning - Trust No One. And what Cia sees within The Testing will change her...

This book is a bit of mixed bag. While I liked reading it, I saw real issues with it and, because of these, it makes it hard to warm to the book.

I liked the idea of this story and the series - the idea of education becoming more lethal - and I know that the second and third books in this trilogy are better than this first book from several reviews I have read.

But, I hate to say this, the execution of this idea is lacking. I'm not sure if it's how the main character, Cia, told the story or the packing of the story. There were times where information was thrown in a paragraph to speed things along (when it might have been more interesting to read the characters talking about the same information). Also, with the four Tests that took part in The Testing, the first 3 test took part within the first 40% but the last test took part in, roughly, the last 40-45%.

What worse is that, at times, I couldn't help but compare to The Hunger Games. Which you should never do, as The Hunger Games isn't the be-all and end-all of YA dystopia novels, but when you have something so successful, you can't help but compare. And at times, you couldn't help but wonder if, because The Hunger Games was so successful, someone wanted something similar and wanted to publish it quickly and The Testing was what was written.

But, like I said before, I know from other book reviewers/vloggers that the series does improve and I do have Independent Study and Graduation Day on my kindle (all 3 of these books are 99p at the moment! BARGAIN!) so I will continue the series. But I don't think that this book is a great book to start a trilogy with.