Review: This is Not a Test

Title: This is Not a Test
Author: Courtney Summers
Publication date: June 19th, 2012
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Genre: Young Adult horror/post-apocalyptic/zombies
Pages: 323
Source: bought!
Rating: 5 I would marry this book


Summary from Goodreads: 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 want to 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?


My thoughts: Disclaimer: There may be gushing ahead. You have been warned! There are so many things I want to say about this book. I have read a lot of great books this year, but I honestly think this may be my new favorite. It was just.that.epic. I loved it. I read it in one sitting. I want to reread it over and over (and I am not a rereader). Yes, it's a book with zombies. But it's not only about zombies - it is so much more. Sloane is our first-person, present-tense narrator, and she does a hell of a job. There is action, but the story is highly character-focused, but we'll get to that later. Where to start?


The writing is beautiful. Gritty and heartwrenching and even lyrical at times. I had my husband pick up some page markers at the store while I was reading (I usually dog-ear the pages I know, I know, don't hate me! mostly because I usually only have a couple places in a book that I actually want to mark), and there are so many vivid lines. Here's a sample: "A splintering sound reached my ears and then again, again and again. Something splitting open. At first I think it's me, that when you die, you splinter into a million pieces, but then I feel wet - wet against me, but slick and wrong. And then a dead wet weight on top of me" (101). Another: "These words cut me, feel like they cut me when they come out. They tear up my lips, make them bleed" (209). The way Sloane thinks, and describes her thinking, honestly stuns me! She is broken, but somehow finds herself, and the journey and description Summers gives us to get there is brilliant. (Sorry for so much gushing!)


Sloane finds strength in herself throughout the novel that she didn't realize she had. She may not seem like a "strong independent" heroine in the beginning, as we see her cowering from her abusive father and lamenting the fact that Rhys and Cary saved her rather than leaving her to be eaten by the living dead, but we see her grow and change right before our eyes. I loved Sloane as a character - she is not perfect by any means (at some points, I wondered if perhaps she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and that makes her even more realistic. I love Rhys and Cary (I may have a teeny tiny book-crush on Rhys...) who are both courageous but vulnerable. Grace is nice, and I love her relationship with her brother. I don't care for Harrison, whom I see as a weakling and a follower (and the person I hope I do not become in the case of a zombie apocalypse. I'm not a fan of Trace either, though his loyalty to his sister is admirable. To me, all of these characters are honest and realistic portrayals of the different kinds of teenage personalities we might expect to find grouped together during the zombie apocalypse. 


The zombies...are scary as hell! As I mentioned, this is more than just a zombie novel, so we don't get a ton of face-to-face zombie action, but the constant threat of them is always waiting just beyond the barricades. They are machines! They are not as helpless seeming as I've read them in other books, rather they are fast, tricky, and nasty buggers.


Overall, I can say without a doubt that this book will definitely make my top 10 books of 2012, and it may even be at the very top. I will be checking up on Summers' other works. Even if you're not a fan of zombies, the feel of this book is very contemporary to me (you have a girl who doesn't want to live = understandable issues, maybe a hint of romance, perhaps?), so you should read it. If you're not a fan of contemporaries, there is enough survival-mode atmosphere (and some zombies) to pique your interest, so you should read it. Sensing a pattern here? :)