Five Lakes Colony is one of the many cities still standing in the United Commonwealth, what's left of the United States after the seven stages of war. The city has been restored, but the land around it lacks trees, grass, water, and unmutated animals due to the intense radiation it has been through by the greedy leaders hoping to gain power during the war. Malencia, more commonly known as Cia, is a 16-year-old girl graduating a year early and has been given a chance to go through testing to see if she is fit to join University. What she doesn't know is the horrors people faced while going through the testing. Her father, who has passed the testing and made it through university, tells her about his nightmares, leaving Cia terrified of what is about to come.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Cia's personality and found myself thinking of how similar she is to the main characters of other Dystopian novels I've read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking Dystopian novels very similar to The Hunger Games by Suzanna Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and Maze Runner by James Dashner.