Review: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers
Publisher: St. Martins Griffin
Cover Love: 10/10
Add: Goodreads

 Goodreads: 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 Review:

This is the very first book that I have read by Courtney Summers, but it will definitely not be the last! She has such an amazing writing style; I can truly get into the character’s mind and become the person myself. This is Not a Test is a book that certainly grabbed my attention straight away, firstly from the cover. Have you not seen it? It’s amazing, I love the simplicity of it, but also how her hair is swept across her face and the blood splatters the page make you want to delve in deeper. I was able to read the first chapter online and just KNEW that I HAD to have it after reading it. It kept me on my toes, shocked me, excited me and all in one little chapter. This is Not a Test is a book that will stay with you for weeks, heck, months even, after you’ve finished it. It still creeps up on me and I finished it in early December.

Summers knows how to create the perfect voice for her characters. Each and every one of them all has their own personalities and quirks and I felt like they were very believable. I cried with them, shouted with them and on the rare occasion, even laughed. Sloane –the main protagonist has such a distinct voice because she is broken, quite simply. She is not like the others, who genuinely want to survive and this was a very interesting perspective to read from. I liked Sloane, I really did. She was not perfect, but who is?

Although this is a ‘zombie post-apocalyptic’ novel, don’t be fooled. This is Not a Test may feature zombies, but most of the action takes place within the town’s school building. This creates a very atmospheric and hostile background. Being in constant presence of other people 24/7 and the fear of the zombies was the perfect concoction to create chaos. Things are not as they seem and do not trust anyone. Question everything and pay attention to subtle things. This is Not a Test focuses more on the character’s interactions and how well or not-so-well they deal with the zombies and each other.

This is Not a Test definitely keeps you on your toes. Right from the very start, things do not start well for Sloane. I don’t think the first chapter is still available but seriously, read this book! If you haven’t, you are seriously missing out! Summer’s is the expert in creating tension and there was not a dull moment in this book. I did not want to put it down, I cancelled dates, turned my phone off  and locked myself away with a hot chocolate for about three hours. So if you’re going to read this book, know that it is seriously addictive!  I was frantically turning the pages again and again, devouring it.

You will truly begin to care for the characters in This is Not a Test. They all have little secrets that are unraveled throughout and some of them are real shockers. I really did not expect some of them, but that made me love the book even more. This is not a fairytale, so there is no guarantee for a happy ending. Some characters will not make it out alive and you’ll cry for them as if you were there. The realism is also there too, as they do act like normal teenagers would; getting some alcohol and playing truth or dare and there is some romance in this book.

Seriously, I cannot recommend this book enough. Just read it and you will understand. This is one amazing book that should not be missed. There is lots of action, a screamable(did I just make that up?)- amount-of-tension, some steamy romance and very human emotions. What are you waiting for?! Read it now!

5 out of 5 stars. 

                                              

Blog Tour: Rebecca Donovan - A Day in the Life

Hi guys! :) Today we have Rebecca Donovan here (author of Reason to Breathe, I can't wait to read it!) explaining what she does on a daily basis.
                                                                               ~

There isn't anything typical about my days. Sure, there are many days that run together, following the same routine of getting out of bed, showering, eating breakfast while checking my social media sites and email, going for a walk, picking my son up from school, checking the social media sites and email again, working on  business obligations, reading and going to bed. Nothing thrilling or exciting about those days. But the days that I write, the days that I'm engrossed in the story and nothing else around me matters — those days, I may not even get out of my pajamas until four o'clock in the afternoon. I may neglect to eat, my creativity fueled by the caffeine of Mt. Dew. The hours slip by as the voices in my head fill the laptop screen in front of me. And when I look up, I'm sitting in the dark. Those days — the days when I live within a dream that gets translated into words, words that make me exhausted with every fathomable emotion— those days are my favorite. That's when I know I'm doing exactly what I'm meant to do. Days when I live in a blurry haze of reality are the days that I know I'm an author, and I wouldn't give up the rush of creating for anything.

                                                                           ~ 
 
Thank you Rebecca! I really enjoyed reading your piece :)

If you want to get in touch with Rebecca you can so at: Twitter, Website or Facebook.

Blog Tour: A Day in the Life by Tammara Webber

Hi guys! Today I have Tammara Webber (New York Times Bestselling Author of Easy and Between the Lines) here, explaining what she does on a daily basis. If you haven't read Easy yet, I'd highly recommend it! It's amazing, my review is HERE if you wish to take a look.
                                                                          ~
The I-wish Version of a Typical Morning: The day begins with a joyful bounce out of bed at dawn, followed by a rousing bit of exercise. I peruse the morning paper while sipping a cup of herbal tea and nibbling a croissant. I’m seated at my desk and tapping literary brilliance on my laptop by 7 a.m.

Reality: The snooze alarm button no longer says “snooze” because the alarm has been struck so often that the lettering has vanished. I roll out of bed when Moose, my cat, fwomps directly onto my stomach in a desperate plea for breakfast before he starves to death. (Note: Moose is nowhere near starving to death.) I can’t open my eyes fully before at least two cups of coffee (yes to cream and sugar) and breakfast – usually a bowl of nearly-healthy cereal (no milk) corrupted by a thorough sugar coating.

Once I’m more or less awake, I check my two email accounts, flag everything that requires a reply, take a vague count of how much email is piling up, and move on to answering questions and comments on Facebook and Twitter. If I have a blog post to write, a book to review, a colleague’s manuscript to critique, a Q&A due, or bills to pay, I do these first because I’ve convinced myself that my imagination will trigger more easily and the words will flow better once my daily to-do list is checked off.

Somewhere between noon and 3:00 p.m., I open my story notes and WIP (work in progress). Often – especially at the beginning and always in the middle of a novel – I force myself sit and stare at a cursor blinking on a blank page for hours at a time (with breaks for whatever’s in the pantry and an unreasonable amount of Diet Cokes). Sometimes I type and delete repeatedly while wondering how I’m ever going to finish an 80,000 word novel when I can’t manage to put a single sentence in my hero’s mouth.

When I’m lucky, though, I’m filled with ideas and able to dive right in. On a good day, I may write in half hour spurts throughout the rest of the day, or write until my fingers are numb, I’ve missed dinner, and it’s well past time for bed. Falling asleep while writing has been known to occur, making next-day pre-reads more interesting. (One writer friend, Laura Bradley Rede, confessed to falling asleep at the keyboard. The last thing she remembered doing before dragging herself off to bed was changing, ‘That would come back to bite him in the ass’ to ‘That would come back to haunt him.’ The next day, she found that she’d actually written, ‘That would come back to haunt him in the ass.’)

On the day I finish the first solid draft of a novel, it’s like the end of hibernation must feel for a bear. I emerge into a world that shifted when I wasn’t looking, and now it seems unfamiliar to me, and I seem unfamiliar to it. My family and friends are stunned to suddenly receive regular phone calls or lunch invitations. My cats are baffled to receive regular meals. I have time to read and socialize and shower consistently. Once the painful revision/editing phase begins, and during the frenzied promotional phase (both include a good deal of hair pulling – my own – and literal gnashing of teeth), I may determine that I’m never, ever writing another thing again.

And then I wake up with a slightly muddled idea for a new story, and the whole cycle begins again.
Sorry, Moose.

                                                                              ~

Haha I loved this! :D Thanks Tammara! You can contact Tammara in a number of ways, on her Twitter, her website  and Facebook.

Review: Partials by Dan Wells

Partials by Dan Wells 

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release Date: March 29th 2012

Cover Love: 8/10

Goodreads: 

The only hope for humanity isn’t human. In a world where people have been all but wiped out by a virus created by part-human cyborgs called ‘Partials’, and where no baby survives longer than three days, a teenage girl makes it her mission to find a cure, and save her best friend’s unborn child. But finding a cure means capturing a Partial…

My Review:

This is only going to be a short review because I read the book a while ago, but made notes on what I liked and didn't like. It’s tricky for me because Partials was a bit slow for me at first. It took at least 100 pages to truly get my teeth into it. It’s a very heavy book, jam packed full of information, so it’s a lot to take in. You have to be concentrating when reading it, so you don’t miss anything crucial and have to go back. It includes a lot of thought process from the characters, so there is a lot of internal dialogue and it’s very scientific with its terms.

Partials reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale with a splash of I, Robot. I’m excited to find out what happens in the second one ‘Fragments’ which is due out next year (2013), because there’s a lot of room to explore things that happen in further detail.

It felt very much like a war novel, and while that may put some people off, believe me it worked. It wasn't what I expected at all; there isn't much romance in it, but a ton load of action! So if you want a book that’s more action than gushy romance, then this is your book.

Partials is also written in 3^rd person, which is admittedly not my favourite, so it was hard to relate to Kira at times. The characters were great to read about, they all fitted in well and had their own part to tell, but they were just okay, not brilliant. The latter half of the book was much better than the first half in my opinion.
Partials is a great books, with a unique idea and I would definitely read the next one! 

3 out of 5 stars.

Breathe Blog Tour

Hi guys! Sorry for the lack of posts, my laptop has broken so I'm trying to get it fixed.

In the meantime, I'm a stop on the Breathe blog tour! :) So excited, this is an amazing book! You can check out my review for it HERE.

Who are Alina, Quinn and Bea?

Alina, Quinn, and Bea are very different teenagers, each one with a pressing agenda, though forced to alter that agenda the more they learn about their world. Alina is tough and will stop at nothing to see the powers that be brought down. Quinn is a little clueless; it takes a tragedy to make him sit up and see what is right in front of him. And Bea is gentle and kind, but beneath this frothy layer of loveliness is the will to fight for her freedom. I love all the characters: they grow so much and to me it doesn’t really matter where you start, it’s where you end up that matters.

You can find Sarah on: Facebook or Twitter or her own website :)







Alsoooo! The great news is ONE lucky winner from the UK could get their hands on a copy! :)
All you have to do is fill in this form:

Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: November 15th 2011
Cover Love: 9/10

Goodreads: Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days. The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color. The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now. Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

My Review:

Shatter Me is just wow. Mafi’s writing is so enchanting; I was completely captivated by it. It’s easily become my all-time favourite book of 2012 and I’d recommend it to everyone. 

The characters are all very well developed. I enjoyed reading about Juliette, she’s a girl who has the ability/power to kill people by just touching them. Adam is the love interest and I fell in love with him myself. The characters in Shatter Me are by no means perfect characters at all, they all have their own faults and weaknesses and are very realistic. I also kind of liked Warner.. Please tell me I’m not the only one! There’s just something about him that’s intriguing and magnetic, he’s a very troubled character although his background hasn’t been revealed yet, so it’ll be especially interesting to read about that in the next one –hopefully if it’s in there because I would love to know.

I’ve seen that some people are not too fond of the strike through style of the writing, but I really enjoyed it. It made Juliette feel much more real, as if she was thinking different things and not saying them out loud, as we’ve all done. She’s a very broken character to read about and I truly loved reading from her perspective. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be completely ostracised by humanity and by your own parents. I love how much she evolved over time from the beginning of the novel to the end; she becomes almost a whole other person.

The plot was really interesting. It kept me hooked all the way through and there wasn’t a point where I genuinely wanted to put it down because I was bored. There’s a real mix of suspense, action and romance, it’s a great mixture that swept me along. I cannot wait for Unravel Me; it’s going to be so exciting, especially with all the new characters that we meet near the end of the book. I didn’t expect half of the twists and turns that happened, this book constantly kept me on my toes.

I’ve seen a lot of people say that they are not too fond of all the metaphors used, but I absolutely adored them. The way she described some of the scenes with Adam were just so great, “He leaves less than a foot of space between us and I'm 10 inches away from spontaneous combustion” and“He's a hot bath, a short breath, five days of summer pressed into five fingers writing stories on my body.” They really capture the intense feeling of the scenes –especially one of my favourite bits, which involves a bit of shower kissing :D 

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. It’s so so good and I want no, need the next book so bad! Shatter Me has everything that you could want in a book, romance, action, suspense and some really great characters.

5 out of 5 stars. 

                                                              
                                                            

Breathe by Sarah Crossan

Breathe by Sarah Crossan
Release Date: October 11th 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Add to: Goodreads

Goodreads: The world is dead. The survivors live under the protection of Breathe, the corporation that found a way to manufacture oxygen-rich air. ALINA has been stealing for a long time. She’s a little jittery, but not terrified. All she knows is that she’s never been caught before. If she’s careful, it’ll be easy. If she’s careful. QUINN should be worried about Alina and a bit afraid for himself, too, but even though this is dangerous, it’s also the most interesting thing to happen to him in ages. It isn’t every day that the girl of your dreams asks you to rescue her. BEA wants to tell him that none of this is fair; they’d planned a trip together, the two of them, and she’d hoped he’d discover her out here, not another girl. And as they walk into the Outlands with two days’ worth of oxygen in their tanks, everything they believe will be shattered. Will they be able to make it back? Will they want to?

My Review:
Wow, wow, wow!! Breathe is absolutely amazing. I was in such a horrible reading slump and every book I was trying failed to deliver, but this kept me hooked from the very first page. ‘Breathing is a right, not a privilege, so I’m stealing it back.’ * Instantly this made me ask myself a lot of questions.

Crossan sets out a terrifying world, with citizens having to live in a Pod where oxygen is regulated. The Pod Minister claims that people cannot survive outside the Pod because there isn’t enough oxygen in the air, so there is a big divide between the lower class (who can’t afford a lot of oxygen) and upper class citizens (who can obviously afford a lot). There aren’t enough trees for there to be a great amount of oxygen and this is a significant message that the environment is very important.

Breathe is set out in a split narrative, so we get to hear from Quinn, Bea and Alina. Quinn is the spoilt rich kid (a Premium) whose father is high up in the Breathe hierarchy, Bea is Quinn’s best friend, but she is an auxiliary (a lower class citizen) who has no prospects and Alina is the rebel, a member of RATS (the Terrorists) she wants to expose the corruption that is taking part in the Pod. It was very interesting to read from each view point as they all had their own personalities and it was great to see them all from each other’s perspectives. 

All of the characters develop so much as people from who they were when the book started, even Old Maude Blue changes. Most of the characters change for the better, although some don’t. You’ll grow to care about them and wonder what’s going to happen to them and scream at them to run.

This book has so much action in it, as you can tell from the first sentence; this book starts with a bang and refuses to let you go. There’s action from the very start and all the way throughout. Corruptions are sneakily unravelled as the novel progresses, which leave the characters facing a huge amount of problems and dilemmas.

Some of the scenes are heart breaking, especially with Alina and Abe, Quinn and his father and Bea with her parents. This isn’t a fairy tale and not all of the characters make it, sometimes there has to be sacrifices.

Overall, you should read this book very soon! It has action, romance and a lot of unexpected events which will leave you gasping for more.

5 out of 5 stars.

*This quote is from an uncorrected proof copy and is subject to change.

*Thanks to Bloomsbury for letting me review this book in exchange for an honest review.