Verify by Joelle Charbonneau

I'm currently teaching a unit on dystopian fiction to my eighth graders, and I needed a novel to read alongside of them. I had recently picked up Verify by Joelle Charbonneau, so I decided to give that one a shot. I had read and mildly enjoyed Charbonneau's The Testing trilogy years ago, so I figured that this would be a pretty safe pick to read quickly and recommend to my students afterward. As I was to discover, I was only kind of right.

The plot of the story follows Meri Beckley, a sixteen-year-old girl living in Chicago in the future. This version of Chicago is seemingly perfect. There is virtually no crime, and the government has made great strides in creating pristine, beautiful communities where everyone gets along and works together. As the novel begins, Meri is struggling to cope with the recent death of her mother, a prominent artist who was struck by a car several months earlier. While examining some of the artwork her mother left behind, she stumbles across a series of images that lead her to a mysterious underground group called the Stewards.

One of the leaders within this group, another teen named Atlas, begins to tell Meri facts that she didn't know existed about her world - facts that throw everything she thought she knew about her idyllic community and about her own mother into doubt. Soon, it becomes clear to Meri that she has been living in a world that is highly censored and rigidly controlled by the government, and that her mother's death was not due to a random car accident. Understanding this, Meri embarks on a mission to continue the work her mother started, and alert people to the reality of their oppression.

This book was a bit of a mess, and it's a real shame because Charbonneau had some intriguing ideas here. On the positive side, I enjoyed the novel's message about the dangers of censorship and the importance of books. It's a crucial message that is still relevant in our society today, as we grapple with the current government's stance on "fake news" and its treatment of reporters and news outlets. I also enjoyed the ways Charbonneau showed the government exerting control over the people. Getting rid of all books and paper under the guise of a recycling program, and controlling the flow of information through the tablets everyone uses in lieu of physical media was interesting and felt like something that could actually happen. Also, I really liked the cover design. It was very distinctive and ad eye-catching, and made excellent use of colors.

Unfortunately, the positive aspects in the novel were swallowed up by its problems. This novel has serious issues with characterization and pacing. Meri, Atlas, and the rest of the characters were rather flat, and it was difficult to feel engaged in their struggles. No one came alive in the story for me, and the insta-romance that was thrown in for Meri was unsatisfying and unnecessary. The pacing was very unrealistic as well, with the events of the story taking place over the course of just two or three days. This was entirely too fast for a young girl to uncover the truth about her dystopian world and lead a resistance movement. However, the short amount of time the story took place over doesn't mean that the book was fast paced. Somehow, the action of the plot felt oddly slow. There were long, boring stretches in the story. The novel as a whole just didn't feel right; it was too difficult to suspend my disbelief while reading.

Aside from these issues, there was one other aspect of the story that irked me that I must mention - the terminology used by the resistance movement. The Stewards use train lingo as code words for their operation. It's a nod to the Underground Railroad, but it didn't come across well (at least to me) at all. Everything within their operation, and I mean everything, had a train code word. People within it were classified as conductors, porters, stokers, etc. The different bases were referred to as "stations." The rooms with beds were referred to as "sleeper cars." The suicide pills members carried were referred to as "dead man's switches." Being inducted into the movement was referred to as getting a "ticket." It was too much. It didn't come across as cool or secretive; it came across as unbearably cheesy and I started cringing every time I heard a train word. More than any other issue I had with the novel, this language choice bothered me the most.

Verify is a novel with a lot of potential and great ideas, but it ultimately falls down in its execution. I was right in my initial assumption that this would be a quick read, but I was wrong in my assumption that I would be able to recommend this to students. Reluctant readers will struggle with the slow pace and avid readers will struggle with the unrealistic story elements. I'm not sure who would really, truly enjoy this story. This is book one in a planned duology, and I'm not sure that I will be picking up the second novel. Sadly, this is one of those reads that was mediocre and is destined to be forgotten as I move forward with my reading life.


Challenge Tally
Finally in 2019: 44/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 68