Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted for us book blogger types by the Broke and the Bookish. They provide a topic, and all of us participants post our answers on our blogs and we hop around checking out one another’s answers! This week’s topic is: 

Top Ten Things I’m Thankful For (bookish)

1. Netgalley
Thank you for always being a great place to easily request novels, and for being so easy for me to deal with! 

2. Publicists
Thank you all for being so friendly and helpful during our constant pursuit to bring reviews to potential readers and to connect authors to them as well. 

3. Readers
Thank YOU for being the heartbeat behind the world that is book blogging.  Without you wanting recommendations for good books and authors, we would be nothing! 

4. Authors
Thank you for providing us with books we love, dislike, throw across a room, and sleep with under our pillows. Every read is important regardless of review outcome.

5. Kindle
I just really love my kindle for making it easier and cheaper for me to buy certain books since my library has almost run out of space!

6. Twitter
Such a great way to connect with readers, authors, publishing houses, and publicists!

7. Fellow Bloggers
I met a lot of you at Book Expo America this past year, and am fortunate to be attending this year with some I met.  You make the business of blogging so much fun and informative.

8. Goodreads
I just really love going through your lists of upcoming releases so I can know which books I definitely want to track down, and which ones I can add to my evergrowing Waiting on Wednesday posts! 

9. Missy
My co-blogger, who has been a great help this past year since she started helping me.  She was responsible for keeping the blog up when I had elbow surgery and was unable to type for a few weeks. 

10. Publishing Houses
Thank you for giving us the gift of books constantly throughout each year.  I honestly don’t know what I would do without being able to pick up a novel and escape for a while. 


What bookish things are you thankful for this year? 

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted for us book blogger types by the Broke and the Bookish. They provide a topic, and all of us participants post our answers on our blogs and we hop around checking out one another’s answers! This week’s topic is: 

Top Ten Things that make your life as a reviewer/blogger easier

1. Followers: Without you all, I wouldn’t have an audience to review for!  Plus, I love all of your comments and participation! 

2. Contributors: Missy, my partner in crime, is amazing and I couldn’t do this without all of her help! 

3. Publicists: You know who you are.  You do your best to make sure that reviewers have some of the best tools at their disposal and provide us with your help and support!

4. Blog Tours: Thank you to all tour organizers, especially GCR Book Tours and Book Nerd Tours for all that you do!

5. Authors: Thank you for inspiring me to become a book blogger. 

6. Netgalley: A great way to receive advanced reader copies and help authors promote their books! 

7. Edelweiss: Very similar to Netgalley, and is a great way to network with publishing houses. 

8. Twitter: An easy way to get the word out to followers and potential followers. I love you all. 

9. Fellow Bloggers: You all ROCK, and I love your blogs. 

10. Blogger: I can’t leave out my hosting site!  Blogger is helpful and has been extremely easy to use. 

What are some things that make YOUR blogging life easy (book blogger, fashion blogger, etc?) 

Book Review: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

Publication Date: June 19, 2012

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?

The title of this post-apocalyptic novel certainly is ironic. Most everything that the main protagonists encounter are, in fact, mental and physical tests of their upbringing and social adjustments. The main character, and narrator, is Sloane a girl who was abandoned by her sister and beaten by her father. A stereotypical abuse victim, Sloane has withdrawn from everyone and hates herself for all the bad things that continue to happen to her. She has planned her suicide, but has yet to go through with it.

This is how the story begins. I’m glad there is something other than depression to blame for Sloane’s suicidal tendencies, because it makes her easier to relate to and empathize with her. Shortly after we are introduced to Sloane, the zombie apocalypse happens. She finds herself locked in her old high school with a random group of teenagers that she is sort-of friends with/acquaintances with. Over the course of a few weeks, the six of them band together and barricade the doors against the living dead, raid the cafeteria for food, and salvage anything they can from the rest of the building.

Overall, I think this interpretation of a zombie apocalypse is completely believable. I love that Summers didn’t let all technology and modern convenience fail at once (because it feels like that always happens in post-apocalyptic novels), and acknowledges that sometimes those that you least expect to be survivors will be the ones to save your life. The hatred between Trace and Cary is completely understandable, and it was impossible to choose a side between them based on the circumstances.

Sloane’s voice is straight and clear, and we understand everything as she understands it. Summers does an excellent job at keeping her narrator in the dark rather than making her some seemingly omnipotent character that “senses” the right answers. Sloane is a real person to me. One thing I do take issue with in this case, however, is that since we are getting this story told in the first person the audience has no explanation for how or why the dead began to rise and attack. I understand that it is part of the scary mystery of zombies, but I feel that the narrative could have been stronger had there been at least an inkling of the cause. I know they mention the flu, but I assumed that was speculation.

While some of the plotline was predictable, (the relationship that develops between Rhys and Sloane was inevitable from the beginning), there is something that I loved most of all. That the character, Sloane, that is completely hopeless in the beginning and wants to escape life through death more than anything, changes into a young woman who is resourceful and intelligent enough to live.

I think the ending felt a little rushed, and there could have been more resolution for the main characters. There is more I’d like to say, but since this book doesn’t come out until Summer 2012 I’m going to try to keep it straightforward. It is possible that this story could continue, so who knows. I give it a four because I enjoyed it immensely and couldn’t put it down, but I still think there could have been more to the story.