This Is Not a Test

"Zombies are a byproduct of the YA dystopian trend that I was always partial to. I always used to recommend Ashes by Ilsa J Bick as like the YA zombie apocalypse book, and it was good but this is better (partly cuz I don't like that Ashes had sequels) and I can't believe I didn't hear about this book until 2020 and didn't pick it up 'til yesterday, especially when I'm Canadian and a frequenter of libraries and in order to not have read Sadie I had to make a conscious rejection of it every time I went in the library building because it was super prominent (should I read Sadie?). This book was definitely not on my library's shelves and it's not in their ebook collection either. IDK the concept of apocalypse has always just appealed to me more than random futuristic societies even if individual futuristic society books are obviously better than individual apocalypse books. <br/><br/>Anyway giant content warning for suicide and people doing violent things to people they traditionally shouldn't do that to.<br/><br/>The book starts with Sloane's suicide note. The pills she was planning on using aren't in the bathroom, she goes downstairs, and boom there's a zombie apocalypse. Her following internal conflict is basically I want to die but I want to do it in a way that doesn't hurt the people around me who clearly and desperately want to live, which turns out surprisingly difficult. That's a really cool perspective to have an apocalypse story from. Anyway this book was super cathartic and I stayed up way too late to read it because I definitely started it too late in the evening if I had known I was going to binge it. Anyway I think if the description appeals to you you have a decent chance of liking this book and if it doesn't you probably won't and there's not much to say. I really liked it."

"<i>This Is Not a Test​</i> is in a word, intense. Suspenseful and angst-ridden, the novel is a story of a girl whose life has totally fallen apart. Her dad beats her, mercilessly and without shame. She and her older sister made plans all their lives to escape together, make a new life somewhere different, somewhere where they could live without fear. But Lily couldn't wait, and left Sloane to fend for herself six months ago. Things got worse when she left. Sloane is desperate to end it all, but her plan falls through when she discovers that Lily took her sleeping pills with her. Shortly thereafter, civilized society collapse around her. The dead rise and attack the living. They are driven by hunger, and spread their infection with a single bite. Shortly after this fresh chaos, Sloane ends up with a group of five of her peers in their old high school, empty but fortifiable. But she's different than them. They are desperate to continue living.<br/><br/>Summers has created a novel that is as much a story about the dangers of abuse, vulnerability, and dependency on others as it is about the dangers of human nature when it is pushed to the limit. Desperation and fear lead to in-fighting similar to ​<i>The Lord of the Flies​</i>. When your survival depends on others, how do you know that you aren't just expendable in their eyes? When surviving together means spending endless time waiting together, how do you deal? The backdrop of a zombie apocalypse lends the perfect amount of terror and tension for this story to work as well as it does. I'd recommend it to fans of angst, zombies, survival tension, and stories about youth trying to find their way. With hints of ​<i>The Breakfast Club​</i>, <i>​Lord of the Flies​</i>, ​<i>Dawn of the Dead</i>​ and ​<i>The Walking Dead​</i>, a lot of people should find something they like about this book."