Monday, November 16, 2015

#BookWorm: Independent Study + Graduation Day

Hello fellow readers,

I recently finished up The Testing series with the last two books Independent Study and Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau. This series has greatly exceeded my expectations and I am so glad that I found this hidden gem of a trilogy. If you haven't read The Testing yet, skip ahead to the second set of bold!

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In the second book of the triology, Independent Study, Cia starts her life at the University and begins to notice some strange things going on. People start to treat her differently, including her first year guide Ian and boyfriend Tomas. As her memories start to return from the testing, she starts to remember who she should trust and who she should not. She gets put into a challenge with other new University students, similar to the testing where she has to take charge. In the challenge she learns more about her fellow classmates and more about the University's motives. When students are assigned an internship, Cia runs into some familiar faces and learns some very important things about people she trusted. Without spoiling too much, this book has an amazing ending. If you haven't read this book yet, skip ahead to the next section after the bold.

In the final book of the series, Graduation Day, Cia is forced to make a choice when President Collindar gives her a pretty serious task to take on as a part of her internship. After she watched Symon murder Michal in the rebel camp, Cia has been on wits end. She has to decide what she is willing to lose if she does not take President Collindar's task seriously. The ending to this book is pretty good! I was happy it wasn't a typical ending.

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All in all, I cannot wait to see what becomes of these books. Although it has similar themes to the other post-apocalyptic series out there, it really can stand on its own. I would give both of these books a 8.5/10. Kept my interest, but sometimes things got repetitive. It would be nice if you read them not in a row to have reminders of things that happened before, but if you read them one after the other it can be annoying. I truly hope it is made into a movie series as I could see people really getting hooked on the characters. I recently picked up a fresh stack of books from the library, and up next on my list is the story Room, which is soon to be a movie Nov. 25! I can't wait to finally finish this book as I cried during the commercial at the movie theater hah!

Thanks for reading with me,
- Olivia :)

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