Review: This Is Not A Test

Title: This Is Not A Test
Author: Courtney Summers
Release Date: June 19, 2012
Source: library

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?

Nancy’s Review:

This Is Not a Test had everything that I love in books: miserable characters, supernatural creatures, and lots of suspense. I’ll begin by saying that I was a bit lost at the beginning of the book, it started off without much explanation and I was confused. However, everything started to make sense fairly quickly and I was able to get right into the story.

I was fascinated by the fact that it was so similar to a few other books that I’ve read about teenagers being stuck in a high school, yet the outside circumstances were completely different. The students in This Is Not a Test were hiding from zombies! I’m not a big “zombie” person and I haven’t read a lot of books about them, but I love that every time I read a new one they are all so different.

I found the story unique in that the main character was a suicidal, depressed girl. She was very much unlike every other main character in these type of end-of-the-world books. Sloane was eager to die from the moment the book began. This made me like her even more. I felt that she was more genuine. She wasn’t trying to be happy or even trying to survive, she was just there.

This Is Not a Test moved at a very slow pace, at time I skimmed through chapters because not much was going on. However, while I wished it had moved faster at times, this wasn’t a big issue for me. The story kept me intrigued enough that I wanted to keep reading it. I have to say that I was disappointed with the ending. It wasn’t as conclusive as I had hoped it would be. I was unsure what had happened at the end and I had no clue what could possible have happened after the book ended. I’m not sure if there’s going to be a sequel, but I’m hoping there will be. I want to know what happened to Sloane!

3/5