Review: This Is Not a Test By: Courtney Summers

Title: This Is Not a Test

Author: Courtney Summers

Published: June 19^th, 2012

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Source: Bought

Goodreads Summary:

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:

I was really interested when I decided to read this one, I had heard some really great things about it I couldn’t wait to see for myself. I have to agree with the many people who have enjoyed this one and it really surprised me how much more than just a book about the apocalypse. I really connected with our main character Sloane, she had lost everything that ever mattered in her life and she wasn’t sure she even cared about living anymore. I felt so much more emotional while reading this book then I ever thought that I would.

Sloane Price is now living with 5 of her classmates in their high school trying to figure what to do now that the world that they have known has completely ended. She didn’t have the easiest life before the world ended and she doesn’t even know if she cares about living anymore at all period. But, now they are all stuck together and trying to figure out what they have to do.

Sloane was such a broken girl and I had a hard time reading about her feelings at times, I really felt for her and she broke my heart. I understood where she was coming from after everything that she had went through but, it was still hard to read. Imagining 5 teenagers trying to survive in their old high school and agree with everything while being scared and alone. Sloane was almost indifferent to everything that was going on around her which was frustrating for me as the reader at times.

Overall, I loved this book. It was so much more contemporary and deep and so much more than I expected and I can’t wait to read more books from Courtney Summers.