Early Buzz Review: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers
Published June 19th, 2012 by St. Martin’s Griffin
Paperback, 320 pages
Source: Netgalley
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It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up.

As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually wantto live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?-from Goodreads

Courtney is known for her three other young adult contemporary novels. I completely enjoyed reading Fall for Anything and Some Girls Are. When I heard she’d written a ZOMBIE book, I was like “OMG! I have to read it because it’s Courtney Summers and I HAVE to see how she’s going to pull this off!” So…did she pull it off? She. So. Did.

I was hoping This Is Not a Test would have a similar feel to it as her other novels, even though it is about zombies, and it does. From the first few pages, I can tell she added a bit of a contemporary flare to it. Our protagonist Sloane, doesn’t want to survive the zombie apocalypse and she brings her troubles from her home life with her on her journey of…survival? It wasn’t really her journey, but the journey of other’s around her. Sloane had me hurting inside my heart for her. I could feel her pain and I would flinch right along with her (I just flinched typing that sentence, seriously). I felt many different emotions at once while reading.

It’s a zombie book, so I should probably talk about zombies. For this being a book about a zombie apocalypse, we don’t see that many zombies in this book…I loved it this way! I’m not a fan of horror or zombies, at least in movies. I know, you’re probably wondering why I would read a zombie book then…good question! I was thinking who the author was and was hoping for a book with not lots of gore and horribly scary things…I got this. We only get a few scenes that have zombies in them. The scenes we do get with zombies had me scared when I went outside at nighttime right after finishing this.

I’ve read another young adult book regarding survival that involved a group of kids being stuck inside a high school…it was rather boring. This story set in a high school wasn’t boring, the plot moves along well. Even inside the school, with little to no zombie action, my heart was racing and I had to keep reading on. My blood was pumping through my veins incredibly fast after this book was over. I wouldn’t call this book scary per se, because ya’ll might know I can’t handle scary, but I did get the chills now and again. Obviously I didn’t stop reading, so I could handle it. I’m pretty proud of myself. I also think others who don’t think they can handle zombie books should give this book a shot…seriously, I’m a total scaredy cat and I’m happy I read it. 

I read This Is Not a Test over the course of 12 hours while having to constantly set it down to deal with real life things. I was upset when I had to stop reading it (stupid real life). I love standalones and I gripe about every young adult book being turned into a series, but I’ll be honest, I want to know MORE! I might never get it and that’s okay.

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