ARC Review: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

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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?

Oh, my. This book took my emotions up and down a roller-coaster: intense fear, excitement, tension, then heartbreak. With deeply scary zombie scenes, violence, and a thorough dose of reality, Courtney Summers has written a true post-apocalyptic masterpiece.


I never thought I'd really love a zombie book. While I border on the 'okay/like them' side for mystery books, horror isn't really my forte. The main reasons for this are that 1. I am a serious scaredy-cat, 2. call me weird, but I get more freaked reading books than watching horror movies, and 3. the Goosebumps series I read as a seven year-old scarred me for life. This is Not a Test was horrifying, but not in the goosebumps-and-shivers sort of way. I never really expected a zombie to leap out at me when I wandered to the kitchen for a glass of water in the middle of the night after reading this. But the scarred heroine, the tragic deaths, and the tension and heartbreak between the characters scared me. The characters were all so human, the delivery of this book so powerful, that I couldn't help but imagine six scared teenagers all alone in a zombie-infested world, making decisions bigger than any teenager--any human--should ever have to make. And I'm not kidding in saying that it truly scared me.


Courtney Summers wields her writing like a natural. I know that most authors spend years and years developing their craft and still have trouble writing scenes that have true emotional impact. This book is 145 pages long, but the story it tells and the writing it delivers stretches so much beyond that. And that's part of what I love about this book--in those short 145 pages, maybe about 30,000 words--she manages to tell so much, to show so much about human nature and teenagers. She isn't writing YA; she writes for YA. There are so many powerful lines in this story, and with language so simple it stunned me, Courtney Summers was able to tell a story that went so far beyond those words.


The characters had backstories. They had families, parents, siblings. And we are shown this--there is tension, there is love, there is romance, there are feelings, and there is hatred. Sloane is an abused child, and her earnest yearning for her sister and her deep longing for a family really touched my heart. She was irreparably broken and we can see that she still is irreparably broken at the end of the story, and that makes her so real.


Thank you to St. Martin's for supplying the ARC and thank you to Julie Cross for this wonderful opportunity to read the story. And here are the notes I wrote for the official Perfect 10 ARC relay post (let me tell you that I did not want to stop and write while I read this story).

Page 50: Very exciting so far. Sloane seems like a very interesting character. Can't wait to see where this will go.

Page 100: The characters in this book are so flawed, so real, that it makes me love the story even more.

Page 145: I don't know what to say. Truly. I'm speechless. It's so tragic and heartbreaking but so tragically hopeful at the same time. I've never read a book quite like this before. 

I would recommend this book to everyone. It's one of my first zombie novels (yes, I know! Shame on me), but you can bet that I'll be reading many more, as well as stalking closely following Courtney Summers's publishing news from now on! Also, have something nearby to hug when you finish the story. Preferably a cute animal, a jar of Nutella, a bar of chocolate, or some cheese. You might feel a little teary.

★★★★

It was amazing!


A free copy of the book was provided for review purposes but did not influence this review in any way.