Published in 2013,The Testing is the first in a dystopian young adult trilogy by Joelle Charbonneau; it is Charbonneau’s first venture into YA fiction. The Testing is often compared to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games due to its dystopian setting and the similarity of the brutal, life-or-death situations to which each series’ teen protagonists are subjected. The Testing received the Anthony Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel in 2014 and was nominated for several other awards, including the 2013 Agatha Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel, the 2015 Lincoln Award, and the 2016 Missouri Truman Readers Award.

Plot Summary

At 16, Malencia “Cia” Vale is chosen for The Testing—an opportunity bestowed upon only the best and brightest students. Cia’s world is still recovering from a devastating war that ended a century ago and destroyed both society and the environment. The new government, the United Commonwealth, selects the best of each year’s graduating class across its colonies and brings those candidates to the capitol, Tosu City—formerly Wichita, Kansas—where they undergo secretive Testing. Students chosen for The Testing almost never return home; they’re told successful candidates are sent to the colonies where their skills are most needed after University. Unsuccessful candidates are sent to new colonies rather than returning home. When Cia and three of her peers are chosen, she is one of the first to be selected from the Five Lakes colony in the last decade.

After her father pulls her aside to tell her about the nightmares he’s been haunted by since his own Testing—scenes of bloodshed and death, children screaming, his friends blown up in devastated city streets—Cia realizes there may be more to The Testing than she’d realized. When he tells her their former teacher had been similarly haunted, Cia understands their colony’s long years without attention from Testing officials may not have been an accident.

At the Testing center in Tosu City, Cia and her friends quickly discover that the stakes are life-and-death. She watches a friend from home die in one of the first practical exams. Her roommate commits suicide. Candidates who seek medical attention for their injuries never return to the Tests. For the final stage of Tests, the surviving candidates are taken 700 miles away to what used to be the city of Chicago, where they are dropped with nothing but two sets of clothing, two personal items, and three additional items they were allowed to choose from the Testing Center’s storeroom.

As Cia and her friend—and love interest—Tomas undertake the journey, they encounter dangers in the form of mutated animals and people, hidden explosives, murderous fellow candidates, infection, starvation, and dehydration. Finishing the course almost costs both of them their lives—and does kill many of the others—but they are able to come together and use their intelligence, ingenuity, and drive to complete the course.

Cia is helped along the way by a mysterious man who meets her by the fence marking the boundaries of the Testing grounds. He gives her food, water, and a vial of liquid to help her suppress the truth serum she will be given in her final interview—an interview during which she may accidentally incriminate her father, the Testing official who has been helping her, and herself. The drug works, but Cia’s memory of the Testing is wiped by the officials, the way her father’s and the other candidates’ memories were wiped. Weeks later, in the flush of victory, Cia finds and is horrified by a recording she secretly made for herself about the events of The Testing prior to her memory being wiped out. The conclusion is intentionally left open-ended to prepare readers for the next book in the trilogy.