Title:
This Is Not A Test
Author:
Courtney Summers
Format: e-arc provided by publicist.
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?
This is definitely one of my favorite books of
the year! Seriously, it was superb.
This is not a test was
terrifying and raw, and as far as I am concerned, a definite foreshadow of the
future. Yes, there are people out there
who make fun of me (hello to all of my coworkers!) but I have no doubt that
this is our future. It is not a question
of “if”, but rather “when”. Right… back
to the book.
This is not a test starts off with Sloane in
the kitchen with her father. She’s about
to go back to school for the first time in a couple weeks, and the author
doesn’t come right out and say why, but you know. Sloane’s father is super strict, and she is
afraid to tell him that she doesn’t want to finish her toast. That might seem insignificant to you or I,
but to her it instills a definite sense of fear. This first chapter had such an
eerie quietness; it was almost like the silence was a character in the
book. Do you know what I mean? Like it
was thick with silence.
Then there is chaos at the front door. Pandemonium outside. Confusion and blood. Her dad is in a fight with a woman who is
clearly deranged. Isn’t she?
“He stares at her body
and sits there, drenched in someone else’s life, and he looks so calm, like he
knew this was coming, like the way this morning started it was only ever going
to end up like this.”
To me this story feels… punctuated. The imagery comes across in brief synapses. Lie when you are watching a movie and a person is drifting in an out of consciousness, when eyes open and close, and the picture is different every time they open. The effect in this book was fabulous. The first few pages are pretty calm and I’m terrified for what is to come. The unknown of what’s happening is quite possibly even more frightening than the actual act of what’s happening.
Seven days later.
There are so many fantastic passages in this story that I
could quote! Seriously, I could make an
entire review of just quotes and you would be so enthralled that you would be
frothing at the mouth just as I was to read this story. Is that a bad zombie joke? Ha-ha.
The writing is beautiful, descriptive, and you definitely feel like you
are right there. I mean, it all felt so real.
There are six teenagers and they’ve made their way to the high
school. Rhys, Cary, Trace & Grace
(twins), Harrison and of course, Sloane.
Somehow, someway they’ve made it past the hordes of infected “people”
and they’ve barricaded themselves in the high school. Pretty darn smart if you ask me. You’ve got food, water, entertainment, every
facility you could just about hope for.
Except Sloane doesn’t want to really survive. She’s been a survivor her whole life, and so
much has happened in a short amount of time that her will is just sort of short
circuited. You really feel for her. This
is a first person point of view, which doesn’t always agree well with me. But in this story it fits the whole
urgent-but-waiting theme perfectly. There are a few action scenes, but this book
is not battle after battle with the undead.
It’s more psychological than that.
There are some battles, but it’s not really about the infected, it’s
about the survivors.
And let me just take a minute here to mention the formatting. Now I’ve read a digital e-arc in Adobe
Digital Editions, so I don’t know if it will be different later when the book
is released or in print, but let me point out some of my formatting awe
here. Some pages are blank. Some have one paragraph or so. Some have blood spatters. It is so perfectly artistic, so beautiful… I
really hope this is something that transfers to the final editions. I really felt as if not only was I reading
something wonderful, but visually it took me to another place also.
Part two of this book explores a lot of group mentality
issues and how you deal with the zombie apocalypse (my words, not the author’s)
as an individual and as a group. It is
so interesting how quickly the author immerses you into this story, that you
find yourself yelling at the pages.
“Don’t go there!!” and “Turn
around!!!!” If you find a survivor who
isn’t a part of your original core group, well, they are not really a survivor
at all then, are they? You can’t trust
them, can you? Do you take them in and embrace the addition of another living
breathing person, or do you toss them out and make them fend for themselves
because you just don’t really know their intentions, do you?
Part three will shake the foundation of everything you’ve
come to believe about this story. It is a game changer, and dynamics definitely
shift. It’s hard to know what is real
and what is not when everything in your life for weeks now seems like something
out of someone’s imagination and not the real thing. Courtney Summers does such a perfect job at
illustrating the characters with her words, and not just the glamorous good
stuff. We get to see all sides of this
group. We see how they break down and
how they build up, how they handle living now that everything they know has
been chewed to pieces.
And Part four, well, part four I’d call hope. Hope to die, hope to live, who the hell knows
what you are hoping for. For every
person it is different. Personally I was
hoping it would never end, the book that is.
I can’t wait for summer when this is released in June so I can go buy a
print copy because this book needs to sit on my shelf with the rest of my
favorites. Put this book on your
to-be-read this. Follow it. It’s not just a zombie story; it’s a look at
what happens when all hell breaks loose.
Oh, and one more thing before I go. Did you see that cover? Isn’t it just a thing of beauty? The way you can’t see her face, and there is
such movement, as chaotic as it is.
Perfect.
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