This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

This Is Not A Test
by Courtney Summers

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?




I haven't read very many zombie books and the ones I have read haven't been that good. I am a massive fan of zombies though, which is why I bought This Is Not A Test. I'd seen it around a lot before I bought it, and it sounded really good. Like it was going to be full of action and strong characters. Well, it wasn't. It was the complete opposite.

Most of the book consisted of them wandering about a school, bitching, moaning, arguing and just being down right depressing. None of the characters were stand out characters. They all sort of faded into the background and there wasn't any of them that I particularly liked the most.

I was hoping for a lot from the main character Sloane. She'd been through a lot of horrible stuff before the zombie apocalypse and through a lot while they were trying to get to the school. I was expecting a strong, tough character but what I got was a girl who wouldn't stop going on about her sister leaving her, got pissed when the guy who slept with  her sister got with someone else and spent most of the time thinking about when she would get the chance to kill herself. I just really didn't like her. She was moaning all the time, wandering off on her on and just being so depressed that it pissed me off.

Harrison did nothing but cry, Trace was a psycho who was obsessed with his parents death, Grace & Rhys weren't anything special and Cary was a dick.

There was basically no action & hardly an zombies in this one, and I was pretty disappointed by that. I wanted more zombies and more action than people arguing all the time. The best part of the book for me was when Rhys and Sloane went outside to check the guy because they had to fight zombies! I really wish there had been more scenes like that and the one at the end in Sloane's house.

I felt absolutely nothing for any of these characters. They were just... there. The writing style was good though. I managed to get through it quite quickly even though I was pretty bored most of the time. And then there was the un-needed romantic encounters that annoyed me too. So what if it's a zombie apocalypse? Does that really mean that you need to let this guy you knew from school shove his hand up your skirt? No. It does not.

Overall, I wasn't really enamored by this book. I'd expected a lot more and I was extremely disappointed. It's definitely one I won't be picking up again.