This Is Not A Book: Keri Smith

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Still, claims to the contrary, Keri Smith's text is a book, albeit not a very good one. It's really a simplistic collection of activities. This Is Not a Test reminded me of Lord of the Flies meets The Walking Dead -- the first season when you're actually cheering for the humans and not the zombies -- with a dash of The Breakfast Club. Not only was this my first Courtney Summers book, this was also my first zombie book. Verdict? I'd like more of both please. more often than not, trauma leads to a retreat. nobody is a fan of emotional outpourings, are they? or am i projecting again? so let's just talk about this character. sloane is not a fan of emotional outpourings. her father has been physically abusing sloane and her sister for years, and the two of them formed this intensely close bond that never allowed anyone else in. after her sister ran away, leaving sloane alone in the path of her father's rage, she had no support system in place to fill the gap, and became suicidal. Call them a catalyst, a threat, an inciting event – the zombies are an ominous presence that set off a chain reaction of events and lurk unnervingly around the corners of the book. But this is not even so much a book about survival, although that’s certainly one of the themes threading through the story.

This Is Not a Book by Keri Smith | Goodreads

In Sloane, Summers has created a character and a story that hit me right in the chest. I felt an almost relentless ache for her, for what had compelled her to make her decision. And yet never does the writing feel gratuitous or melodramatic. It feels painfully realistic, all the more powerful for the things that are left unspoken, the profound silences between the scenes.It's fine to set up the plot but just please stop going on and on and on and on and on and onnnnnn about it. And not only that, but all conversations from all the characters felt repetitive. The same shit kept coming up. "You killed our parents." "No I didn't." "Your fault." "No." "But it is your fault!" "It's not!" Over and over. Just stopppppp. Everyone was just so stupid and one dimensional. and this. the ramifications of the last two sentences in this quote are quite easy to overlook if you haven't read the book, but:

This Is Not A Book by Jean Jullien, Meagan Bennett - Waterstones This Is Not A Book by Jean Jullien, Meagan Bennett - Waterstones

This was not a zombie book. This was NOT a zombie book. THIS WAS NOT A ZOMBIE BOOK. And I'm still sort of pissed at that. Started in April 2019. Thoughts at the beginning are less relevant, so you may want to scroll towards the end of my review.... Thud. I end up on my knees. I'm dripping with sweat and my stomach is churning and the sound I heard was not the sound of myself falling and landing but- thud. Yes this book has zombies but PLEASE, if that's not your thing, don't let it keep you from reading it. This is a story rich with emotion because Summers has such a genuine talent for creating memorable, unique characters. A book of six teens where every voice is distinctive and grounded firmly in reality is rare and precious. Hell, that's rare and precious for fiction period. The way these kids relate to one another, approaching with caution, testing for vulnerabilities, seeking approval, acceptance, a safe unconditional embrace, just left me riveted. I can tell you, I WAS IN THAT HIGH SCHOOL with them. I felt their fear and pain. I watched them come together, pull apart, rage and cry ... and I cried with them. Oh yes, there were tears people.

Underneath the death and the zombies and the lives, there’s a veneer of fake to it all. The book didn’t feel alive to me, like it should. Maybe that’s just me, because everybody’s given this five stars, but I just don’t get it. I really wanted to, but I didn’t. This story is about Sloane, and the journey she takes, and the decisions she makes. She has the perfect weapon to kill herself, just walk outside and she'll be bitten. So why doesn't she do it? Or does she? Some people don't ever wake up, maybe this is Sloane and maybe not. So, I'm seriously not artistically creative, and unsuccessful when I try to be crafty. But I want to be better at that stuff, whether it's crocheting or sketching or writing or whatever. Ok, so I try things like this. And this is pretty inspirational. But also exceedingly frustrating. When I was a teen or college student I might have been able to do these exercises, but not now so much. My origami boat, even after googling for better instructions, is *terrible.* god, i am so tired of import. there is an awful lot of sleeping in this book. and silence. and yet it is not boring to read - this is such a fast-paced book. but the reality of how boring it would be to survive is much appreciated, and the true fact that not every kiss is the beginning and end of everything. a kiss can be, in fact, just a kiss...

This is not… a serious book - Make it Plain This is not… a serious book - Make it Plain

CATIE. A chav just threw a snowball at my window and I swear I literally just died for a split second. she grows so much as a character, and it is painful and sad and you just want to be there with her, holding her throughout it all. not that she'd let you. We have examined Mommsen’s History with the greatest interest. It is not a book to be lightly read and lightly thrown aside, like a novel, yet it is as entertaining as fiction. This is NOT a Book! is the perfect introduction for kids to how a book is structured and how to tell a good story. This one line did drive the point of the book home. Hold on to what you have while you still have time to appreciate it :Wonder and magic surround us, yet we need a guide to see them. Historically, that guide is the magician-and Robert E. Neale is the celebrated mapmaker for this terra incognita. This book kind of felt like The Breakfast Club meets the zombie apocalypse. It focuses so much more on human relationships as opposed to the apocalypse itself, and it was refreshing. I love the way it implies that zombies aren't always the biggest threat (because Sloane's abusive Father is more scary than any zombie could ever be.) I feel like this is a very realistic take on how teenagers would handle themselves in a zombie apocalypse; all very frantic and unsure of what to do and afraid to kill zombies and people. It's not like you just suddenly become okay with killing zombies just because you're in an apocalypse, and those zombies were people once too.