Someone Picks My Books | Heidi – This is My Book Shelf Blog | The Test by Sylvain Neuval

Hello and welcome to another installment of Someone Picks My Books! This month I had the extremely kind and amazing Heidi pick my book, you can find her over at This is My Book Shelf Blog. As the title states, Heidi picked The Test by Sylvain Neuvel. Thank you so much for helping me out and picking this book for me!

One Sentence Review

A very intense book that messes with your mind and really makes you think about human psychology.

Description

Britain, the not-too-distant future.
Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.
He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.

When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice? –goodread.com

What I Liked

First and foremost, this book is nothing short of intense. It really pulls you in at the start being calm and you think you know what you are getting into, but you really don’t. Everything in a moment got turned upside down and I don’t want to say more than that.

This book is nothing short of amazing for a few reasons, but yes this is going to be a gush review. Sorry, not sorry. This really makes you think about human resilience, human psychology, and what society wants from its citizens. I am writing this review a few days after reading it and I keep thinking about things that characters say and do. Everything in this short novella has a point to it and it is really written to make you think. Even in this short story it has so much to it, it does not fee3l like the author was cutting corners or rushing the reader in the slightest.

What I Didn’t Like

Honestly, I can’t think of a thing I disliked about it personally, but I can see some readers having a difficult time reading this story (spoilers ahead) so here are some trigger warning; murder, brutal violence, terrorism, and racism. I am not the end all be all for trigger warnings, look more into them from other readers before reading this book because they might have picked up on other triggers that I have personally missed.

Overall

Overall, this was a very impactful book to me because it really makes you think about human nature, society, and a laundry list of other things such as prejudices and racism that are ingrained in society. I feel like this little story really packs so much into it that it shows the talent of the author. This will be a story I reread again I feel like and it will have a place on my bookshelf for the years to come.

Next month I am reading a book picked by the wonderful Maggie from the blog Storme Read a Lot. They have wonderfully well written reviews and other awesome posts. Also, their twitter is just as wonderful!

Have you read this book before or is it on your TBR?