This is Not a Test

Holy Hell in a handbasket, This Is Not a Test chewed me up and spit me out! Whew! What a bloody good book!!!! Coming in at less than 300 pages, this book packs quite the punch, especially in the last half. This Is Not a Test is a YA dystopian book about a zombie Apocalypse, but it is so much more! This book is dark, raw, emotion evoking, gritty, intense, powerful, heartbreaking, and violent. This book will put you thought the ringer quite a few times during the course of this book.

Sloane wants to die at the beginning of the book. That is not a spoiler, it’s in the books’ description. Sloane is ready. She has been brutally abused all her life by her father. Her older sister, Lily has left and the world around her is falling apart. There is an outbreak of sorts and people are turning into zombies. When the barricades go down, she decides it’s time – but life and zombies have a way of changing things.

Things go from bad to worse and she finds herself holed up in Cortege High School with five other students who want to live, to survive, to endure. Sloane watches them, she sees their quest to live, to fight, to make it through one more day. Their parents are gone, their other friends are gone, they don’t know when supplies will run out, or if the zombies will get inside. I could feel their desperation, their anxiety, their loneliness, and their humanness.

Oh man, this book left me gutted. The author takes flawed and damaged characters and puts them through the ringer. I cared for them, I feared for them, I held my breath for them, I crossed my fingers for them. I wanted to tell them to run, to stay quiet, to be still, and to not give up.

Becoming a zombie is a transformation – a change that takes place. Change takes place for Sloane as well during the course of this book. She is a broken, scared, and damaged teen at the beginning of the book and as she faces her new reality, readers see how she changes and grows as a person.

This book is raw and had my heart pounding a little bit faster as the book progressed to the end. I love tension and dread in books, and this book has in and then some. This book is dripping with danger, dread, and has an underlying sense of unease on every page. This book is about Zombies, yes; but it is also about people, about humanity, about survival, about life, and pain. The dread in this book man, it’s a killer. It’s the “thud” on the door, it’s the hairs sticking up on the back of your neck, it’s the shadows, and it is the bells that go off. It’s the not seeing but knowing something is out there, but where???? That anticipatory anxiety that has one breaking out in a sweat while being hypervigilant and scanning your surroundings. Courtney Summers does an amazing job of creating a eerie and horrific vibe.

By the time the book came to an end, I felt limp. Exhausted as if I had been the one trudging through the woods, having to make split second decisions, while trying to survive. Fans of “The Walking Dead”, “Night of the Living Dead” or the book The Forest of Hands and Teeth will find this book to be right up their alley. What works in all of those are the characters. They way readers or viewers become invested in the characters. As I mentioned before, Courtney summers created characters that I cared for and for that reason, I not only wanted to keep turning the pages, I had to turn the pages!

Be warned, there are some graphic and violent scenes in this book. Characters will be in situations or make decisions that will be troubling for some readers. But if you can stomach it, This Is Not a Test is a fantastic book. Be sure to read the author’s note at the end of the book as well.

Thank you to Bindery Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.