The Testaments

 Now this was a phenomenal book. My hot take is that I liked this book better than the Handmaids Tale. I'm writing this from my phone.

When I first started listening to it, I knew it was what I hoped to get from the Handmaid's Tale. It had different perspectives so I could really get an inside scope on this. I had always wondered about the kids. Kids are naturally curious. They're gonna ask questions as to why things are the way they are. I enjoyed the dynamic between the three girls. I had no idea Gilead had child marriages. It was shocking news.  Before this book I had some big questions regarding the kids. The Marthas were also interesting characters. They were almost like nannies. I thought the book with the first child was absolutely beautiful. I had a hunch she was the daughter of our girl in the first book. What really got me going was what came after.

Aunt Lydia. In the first book, she was portrayed as a villain and I had to stop myself from mentioning her previously. She did awful things to the women like mutilations and just inhumane punishments. Now when you think about Gilead as a whole, it's easy to point fingers. One being "how awful, you're a woman too! How could you do that to another woman?" Which is valid. However, the big guys had to do some major conditioning with them too. This was more than just "I'm following orders", it was "Im being a perfect authoritative figure....so I can take your asses out." She climbed to the top and gained access to everything. Now does she deserve this... Character arch? I was talking to my other friend about this And she said with all the things Aunt Lydia has done (mind you, she only read Handmaid's Tale) she shouldn't. In her eyes, nothing could redeem her from the awful things she did to the other women. As first, I was inclined to agree. But I couldn't help but notice a few things about her.

One, it's mentioned she was a lawyer in the past. A family lawyer. So she's incredibly smart. Almost a genius. She played every single one of them. She needed to survive like the rest of them so she played to her advantage, gaining their ultimate trust. That's why she had to be so inhumane to the others. There couldn't be one question of her "loyalty" to them. I would go so far as to think she may have been part of Mayday. Because remember, she wanted all this to go down. She was the inside person all along. 

Next thing I noticed was that she was 100% against the child marriages. But it was a big thing in Gilead. Once the children reached a certain age, they would go to classes if I remember correctly, and learn how to be good wives. They even had their pick of commanders. One girl tried to commit suicide because she didn't want the marriage. Now what is interesting about this, was they were ironically all about consent with these kids. They wanted these kids to be happy. They would ask questions like "Are you unhappy with your pick?", "would you rather be with a different commander"? "Are you unhappy with this commander or altogether?" They were really asking them if they were sure and would see where the Child would be unhappy. A completely different view on this compared to the Handmaid's Tale where they didn't care about other women's happiness. This is where Aunt Lydia comes in. When the come tried to commit suicide, she brought the child inside her office, asked the standard questions and figured out the Child didn't want to be married at all. She gives the child an escape. She offers her to become an aunt and hinted if she had a calling. Now I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly but I think the aunts couldn't get married because they were too old to have kids. Im not sure on that but it was an escape for the child because she didn't want marriage at all.

It also happened with our MC character. She had to pick the top commander due to her family's wishes and she was against the idea. Aunt Lydia offered her the same offer she did to the other child. And the girl even helped our MC act like she was some religious fanatic in order to convince everyone of this calling to be an Aunt. She saved two children from child marriage without making it seem like that's what she was doing. 

This is what I mean by saying she's a smart lady: she had hidden cameras to watch the other Aunts who were against her. There were a lot of backstabbing opportunities, she had to watch her back carefully. She put two Aunts against the other if they even came close to finding out the true person she was. She was a master at manipulating. Since she was the top Aunt, it was very difficult to question anything she did. She had competitors like I said, but she played them against the other. 

She played Gilead's system really well and even helped our MC discover who her true family was and introduced her to her sister! She was breaking the system from the inside out. 

Now do I think it's a little too perfect? Of course. In the first book, no mention came up at all because we only see one P.O.V. we only saw what the MC in the first book knew. We see Aunt Lydia as a villain who whipped other women, among other things. I'm not trying to condone that. Nor am I condoning the mutilations she inflicted upon them. 

However, she did break the system from the inside. Does she deserve the redemption? Because if she rebelled, she would have already been dead. We would have seen this at the very beginning of the book where they were rounding up the other women.

It wasn't lost on me how they were rounding up the women who had lawyer jobs, it was eerily similar to how they rounded up the Jews in the Holocaust. They corralled them and made them suffer. Aunt Lydia managed to somehow keep her head intact during the on-screen deaths. 

If she broke the system, she was the main player inside. I'm not trying to condone what she did but she made sure it wouldn't happen again. I'd say...I think she deserves this redemption. 

I'm not trying to sway people here. These were questions I've asked myself and intensely thought about. 

It also answered the age old question of "did she make it out?" From the first book. It was obvious to me she did from the "historical documents" at the end of the first book. But this book solidifies that. I'm happy we got the ending we wanted. 

There was still a lot of suffering. Especially how they starved the women they rounded up. Sometimes they'd shoot the woman right in front of them.

I didn't mention this in the first book, but the partic- cutions caught me very eerily. It was almost animalistic in nature. They used what anger the women had on the men, and played it to their advantage. I touched on this with the first book, how they didn't anticipate human connection in the context of the Commander. 

They however played it well in this book. They took their anger, redirected it in the most gruesome way possible. I couldn't imagine taking someone apart with my bare hands like that. Just in general. I think that's how you deal with emotions in dystopian books. You don't control it, you play into it. 

We see such a stark difference with these two books. We only see the first book in her P.O.V. so there has to be stuff we naturally didn't know about. In the Testaments, it filled those spots beautifully and maybe a little too perfectly. I'm not saying Aunt Lydia was perfect. I just think it was done a little too well. 

I also think the ending was a bit quick. I wanted some of the chase with the main child's P.O.V. I got it with Aunt Lydia's side when they found out, but they never actually showed them trying to go after the kids and failing. I kinda wanted that little bit of chase. 

Again, these are just my ramblings.

This blog lives to see another day 🖤

09/06/2026 0849