Joelle Charbonneau is a young adult novelist living in Chicago, Illinois. Charbonneau had a strong inclination toward arts as a young child and majored in music and theater before pursuing a master’s degree in opera performance. After a career in the theatre supplemented by private music instruction, Charbonneau turned her attention to writing in her thirties.
Her first series, the Rebecca Robbins mysteries, saw moderate success in the young adult fiction (YA) genre. The main character inherits a small-town roller rink from her mother; while in town to sell the building, Rebecca becomes caught in the middle of a murder mystery which causes her to re-evaluate moving back to her hectic city life in Chicago. Charbonneau’s inspiration for the novel’s protagonist came from her own mother who was a notable competitive skater.
Charbonneau’s second YA series, Glee Club, draws from Charbonneau’s own experience as a singer and vocal coach. These novels focus on Paige Marshall as she tries to guide her high school glee club to success while solving various mysteries that occur in the school.
Charbonneau’s most recent and most popular work is The Testing, a post-apocalyptic YA series set in the American Midwest. The stories follow Malencia "Cia" Vale as she enters the cutthroat, competitive, and deadly testing process to join the prestigious University. Wildly renowned in the young adult genre, a film version of The Testing is in the early stages of development.
Charbonneau is currently a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Graduation Day was published in 2013 and aims at questioning authority subtly through its characters. It is a work of fiction that describes a terrible place full of deprivation and terror. In such a place, this book gives space to characters like...
Independent Study (2014) is the second novel in Joelle Charbonneau's The Testing trilogy. It resumes the story of the protagonist, Cia, where the first novel left off: at the start of Independent Study, "Cia is a freshman at the University in Tosu...
The Testing is the first book in a series of the same name written by Joelle Charbonneau. The story follows 16-year-old Malencia "Cia" Vale as she battles her fellow peers from all across the United Commonwealth for a handful of seats in the...
