Book 2 of The Testing series finds our main character Cia attending university having made the cut in the previous book. The tests are not over and as our university students write their examinations for their fields of study, Cia is surprised to find out that she has been assigned to Government, rather than her first choice – Engineering.

The exams don’t end there. The first week of classes the new students undergo further examinations with almost impossible tasks to complete. Failure is never an option. Failure is cause for Redirection. Redirection is fatal.

I’m having a hard time with this series. I enjoyed the first book and was looking forward to this installment in the series. Is it trying too hard to be a Hunger Games clone? Maybe. I can’t see why a world ravaged by warfare, environmental disasters and the like would sacrifice their best and brightest hopes for the future. Why would you cull any student?

The whole rebellion side was a little iffy for me as well. Why bother rebelling when you live in the relative comfort of Tosu city?

The writing was OK. I did find the pacing slower than the first book and at times a little boring. This book felt like a filler book, moving our main character from point A to point B in the overall plot.

I’m not sure that I will be continuing this series. On the one hand, I am curious to see what happens. On the other hand, I am not sure that I will have patience for it.

Review posted on Badass Book Reviews.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a review copy of this book.