This Is Not a Test

Cover for This Is Not a Test
The apocalypse is supposed to be about survival – but what if you don't want to survive? This zombie horror novel features a deft portrayal of depression.

This Is Not a Test

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?

Practical information

Author: Courtney Summers
Publisher: Macmillan (St. Martin's Press)
Publication year: 2012
ISBN: 9780312656744
Age category: young adult
Disabilities portrayed: depression, mental illness
Genres: fantasy, horror

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audiobook available

Author

Courtney Summers

Courtney Summers is a New York Times bestselling author of several novels. Her career in writing began in 2008, when she was 22. Her work has been released to critical acclaim and multiple starred reviews, receiving numerous awards and honors — including the Edgar Award, the John Spray Mystery Award, the Cybils Award, the White Pine award, the Odyssey Award and the Audie Award — and has enjoyed recognition on many library, state, 'Best Of' and Readers' Choice lists. Courtney has reviewed for The New York Times, is the founder of #ToTheGirls, a 2015 worldwide trending hashtag, and in 2016, she was named one of Flare Magazine's 60 under 30. She lives and writes in Canada.

I write books about difficult subjects in hopes that the people going through them read them and feel less alone. If any of my readers have found their voice through my stories, that means the world to me. Growing up, I didn’t feel voiceless so much as I felt unsure of how to use the voice I had, which is eventually how I found writing.
(Book Time, Toronto.com, June 2015)

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Interview with Courtney Summers about This Is Not a Test

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We invite Courtney Summers to the blog to discuss researching and writing mental illness, disability in her zombie novel, and the lack of diversity in apocalyptic narratives.

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Depression Has No Straight Lines, Only Lies

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What about readers like me, who never see their own illnesses depicted? To see story after story where depression draws a straight line to suicide is, for better or for worse, expressing that depression only functions in one way.

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May 18, 2015
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Review: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

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A girl who didn’t want to survive in the regular world is one of a few survivors of the zombie apocalypse, trapped with classmates in their school. But the warped perspective that Sloane’s depression gives to her situation is what makes this book special.