In The Testing, Cia underwent a series of grueling tests, ending in a Hunger Games-esque survival test that she and a few of her classmates made it through. Then, as is standard with the Testing, all of their memories were wiped, and they were simply told they had passed.

Cia is now a freshman at the university, having successfully passed the Testing, but she remembers nothing of it, at least initially. That means she remembers nothing of what she had to do to pass, and nothing of what her classmates did to each other, either. But she is not home-free yet. She still has rigorous classes which come with their own more standard tests, plus a series of more creative tests that will gauge her creativity, smarts, and ability to work with others. And then she’s assigned to the independent study of the title, which comes with its own surprises and challenges.

Meanwhile, Cia also has the nagging fear that not all is what it seems, and she slowly begins to take notice of an undercurrent of resistance – and it’s pulling her in.

While the first book was an edge-of-my-seat thriller, the sequel is more of a puzzle book. The stakes are still high, but Charbonneau focuses on a series of smaller puzzles rather than a large-scale survival trial. The puzzles are clever, too, both in the way they’re set up by the puzzle-makers and the way they’re solved by Cia and her comrades. Reading about these things is incredibly fun – I found myself thinking “oh, how cool (and also awful)!” several times. This series is full of terrible things happening to children, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me miss school a little bit. (Honestly, I could have just as easily said “High school is full of terrible things happening to children” and it would be just as accurate.)

There’s a whole heck of a lot of dramatic irony in this volume, as Cia and her cohorts’ memories have been wiped, but the readers’ have not (obviously). We know all about the betrayals that went down in the first volume, so for a good portion of this sequel, I was holding my breath, just waiting for other similar betrayals to happen here. I was glad that Charbonneau didn’t give me exactly what I was expecting.

For all its positives, Independent Study requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than its predecessor. For example, instead of a recorder in the students’ ID bracelets (as in the first volume), the adults in charge of their education/tests opted for a simple tracker. This allows Cia and some other students to talk freely, which is necessary to the plot. The problem is it makes no sense for those in power to decide they only need to track the students’ movements and not their conversations. It’s such a blatant plot contrivance and it bothered me.

Independent Study wraps up the main plot points introduced in the book, but it does end on a cliffhanger, as many second volumes do. If this bothers you, I advise you to wait until the third and final volume, Graduation Day, is published in the summer.

Review copy received from the publisher. Independent Study will be available January 7.