Teaser Tuesday #10: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


This week's teaser comes from the following book:

Title:  This is Not a Test
Author:  Courtney Summers
Series:  n/a
Publisher:  St. Martin's Griffin
Publication Date:  June 19, 2012
Source:  Southern Book Bloggers ARC tour

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 teaser:

"Baxter studies us.  I'm hoping for something but I don't know what it is.  I want him to handle it the right way.  I want him to make it easier on all of us.  In a way, he does.
He does the most condemnable thing ever.
He tries to run." -- p. 177 of ARC

I actually just finished this one last night, guys, but it SLAYED me.  So raw.  So sad.  Such a realistic portrayal of human behavior in the aftermath of an apocalyptic nightmare.  I fully expect to still be thinking about this one for weeks.  It's definitely not for the faint of heart.

This was my first Courtney Summers novel, though I have Fall for Anything on my shelf, but after This is Not a Test, I want to read everything she's ever written or even thought about writing.  I'll be posting my full review in the very near future.

Labels: contemporary, courtney summers, macmillan, must-read, post-apocalyptic, southern book bloggers, teaser tuesday, zombies