REVIEW: This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

This is Not a Test 
by Courtney Summers

Summary: 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?


REVIEW:
Lilly was gone and she wasn't coming back, Her sister had always said that she would take Sloane with her. But she left and Sloane was left to fiend for herself with an abusive father. Sloane had had all she could stand and it was time to end it and by it, I mean her life. But then the zombie apocalypse happened. She ended up with six other teenagers barricaded in their high school trying to survive by keeping the zombies out. The whole time she thinks she wants to die. And in the end, she's just running to stay alive.

The entire time I was reading this I'm thinking *FLASH BACK to the 80's* I'm watching The Breakfast Club. Seriously at first that's all I could think about. Throw a little zombie in there and there you have it, The Zombie Breakfast Club. :) Teenage drama *with zombies* until the last 50 pages and BAM everything goes haywire.

This is a story about Sloane, Grace, Trace, Harrison, Rhys, and Cary's survival. Not just a physical survival but a mental and a spiritual one on some levels. It is an emotional story. A story where you become part of them in that school. Listening to their fears, anger, and their pain. They all just wanted to be accepted by each other for who they are and not have to worry about what the others think. They've all lost their families and so they become somewhat of a family, with all the things that come with a family. In the end Sloane's character has matured and is forced to come to terms with the way life will be from then on and I believe she has decided dying is not such a great way "out".

I enjoyed This Is Not A Test enough for 4 Daisy's. Maybe because I would have loved more zombie action or maybe because it moved so slow at the beginning. If it would have started off like the last few chapters WOW it would have been awesome in my book!

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FREE FRIDAY #3

Every Friday here on Mom With A Kindle I will tell you about one book on Amazon that is free for your KINDLE!! Yes... Because that's what I use so I'll be passing the good ones on to you. ;) **(Please note that product prices and availability are subject to change. Prices and availability were accurate at the time this blog was posted; however, they may differ from those you see when you visit Amazon.com.)

Today I have two really cool looking book;

Here (On The Otherside) 

by Denise Grover Swank

Summary: Goodreads

Sixteen year old Julia Phillips buries herself in guilt after killing her best friend Monica in a car accident. Julia awoke in the hospital with a broken leg, a new talent for drawing and false memories of the accident, in which she dies and Monica lives. The doctors attribute this to her head injury, but no one can explain how a bracelet engraved with her name ended up at the scene of the accident. A bracelet no one has ever seen before.

Classmate Evan Whittaker paid Julia no attention before the accident, let alone after. Now suddenly he’s volunteering to tutor her and offering to drive her home. She can't ignore that his new obsession started after his two-day disappearance last week and that he wears a pendant she’s been drawing for months. When the police show up one night looking for Evan, he begs Julia to run with him, convincing her that Monica is still alive. Julia agrees to go, never guessing where he’s really from.

Forbidden (The Guardian Chronicles)

by Megan Curd

Summary: Goodreads

Levi's job is to protect his human until it's their time to go. That's what a Guard does. He's done it for years on end, and he'll spend his eternity doing the same, mundane thing, following the same, mundane rules.

...Watch from afar.
...Never share your name.
...And above all, never touch a human.

What Levi doesn't know is that his newest human to protect, Hannah, just might be the catalyst to tipping the scales between good and evil, and he will be forced to decide which side he belongs to. Which friends will he side with, and who will he ultimately protect: his human, or the delicate balance that hangs on stopping the heartbeat of the person he has sworn to protect?

And, when you're already condemned, what's there to lose by breaking the rules?

THE GUARDIAN CHRONICLES: FORBIDDEN will take you into a world of Guards and Guardians, Light and Darkness. What side will you take?

FANTASTICAL 50TH FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY

FANTASTICAL 50TH FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY~(CLOSED)

I am so excited to have made it to 50 followers. That's like a million to me. :) I want to thank my followers by having a FANTASTIC 50th Follower Giveaway.  It is International. There will be 1(one) winner and if I make it to 100 followers I will pick yet another winner. So 2 people have a chance to win a book from the list. So good luck and have fun!! :) Some books will not have been released at the end of the giveaway so I will do preorders for those. :)

The choices are:

                                                                         RULES:

Open Internationally

You have to be older than 13 to enter

You MUST live in a country the Book Depository will ship to. (Find out here)

You need to also be a follower of my blog :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

W...W...W... Wednesdays & Waiting on Wednesday

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

1. What am I currently reading? hard to say because I am jumping between

 This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

 The Living Dead Boy: A Young Adult Zombie Novel by Rhiannon Frater

 The Land Of The Dead by Jonathan Maberry

2. What did you recently finish reading? 

The Kill Order by James Dashner

3. What do you think you'll read next? Ummm....

Definitely, Dead & Gone by Jonathan Maberry,  but after that I'm not sure.

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, originally started by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that highlights upcoming book releases everyone is waiting on. 

What I'm waiting on?

            The Lost Girl

by Sangu Mandanna

Hardcover, 432 pages

Expected publication: August 28th 2012

Pubisher HarperCollins 

Summary: Goodreads

Eva’s life is not her own. She is a creation, an abomination—an echo. Made by the Weavers as a copy of someone else, she is expected to replace a girl named Amarra, her “other”, if she ever died. Eva studies what Amarra does, what she eats, what it’s like to kiss her boyfriend, Ray. So when Amarra is killed in a car crash, Eva should be ready.

But fifteen years of studying never prepared her for this.

Now she must abandon everything she’s ever known—the guardians who raised her, the boy she’s forbidden to love—to move to India and convince the world that Amarra is still alive.

What Eva finds is a grief-stricken family; parents unsure how to handle this echo they thought they wanted; and Ray, who knew every detail, every contour of Amarra. And when Eva is unexpectedly dealt a fatal blow that will change her existence forever, she is forced to choose: Stay and live out her years as a copy or leave and risk it all for the freedom to be an original. To be Eva.

From debut novelist Sangu Mandanna comes the dazzling story of a girl who was always told what she had to be—until she found the strength to decide for herself.

Teaser Tuesday #1

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly 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!

My Teaser: 

"The barricade against the exit is monstrous and every time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, my insides jump and it makes me run faster until I'm circling the gym at a pace I know I can't maintain, a pace that is killing me. I ran as fast out there, but it was different out there."
                                                                                ~p.48 by Courtney Summers

Review: The Kill Order (Maze Runner, #0.5) by James Dashner

The Kill Order by James Dashner


SUMMARY: Goodreads

The prequel to the New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series.

Before WICKED was formed, before the Glade was built, before Thomas entered the Maze, sun flares hit the earth and mankind fell to disease.

Mark and Trina were there when it happened, and they survived. But surviving the sun flares was easy compared to what came next. Now a disease of rage and lunacy races across the eastern United States, and there’s something suspicious about its origin. Worse yet, it’s mutating, and all evidence suggests that it will bring humanity to its knees.

Mark and Trina are convinced there’s a way to save those left living from descending into madness. And they’re determined to find it—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devastated world, every life has a price. And to some, you’re worth more dead than alive.



REVIEW
To begin with I have heard so many different opinions from other reviewers that what I once was expecting this book to be about was not at all what I was expecting when I started reading. I was expecting this to be about Teresa and Thomas as they worked to create the Maze and more about Newt, Ably, and the others before the Maze. But what I discovered after listening and reading other bloggers ARC reviews was that this was not at all what The Kill Order was about.

So as I began to read I didn't have the same expectations that the others had. I went into it open minded. This was probably a good thing for Mr. Dashner because I ended up really liking it. But that's not to say there weren't some parts that I had to pinch myself to keep from falling asleep because it told the same thing about 3 times in a row in 3 different paragraph's and made me just want to scream "GET ON WITH IT! I know what the berge landing site looks like already. I got it the first time!!!!!" *Face Palm*

In a round about open minded way it WAS about Teresa and Thomas and their track to the Maze. It just went a round about way from the view of Mark, Trina, Alec, Lana, and a few others trying to survive after the sun flares hit the Earth wiping out everything as they knew it. A year passes and they are living in a small settlement of people when a berg appears and starts shooting darts at them. Mark and Alec jump on board and crash it. But by the time they make it back they find out that the darts where meant to intentionally infect people with...yep... "The Flare". The people who didn't die initially, became crazy zombie like sick people. That's when Mark, Trina, Alec, and Lana start out on a journey to find the cause of the virus and along the way they pick up an important person.

If you haven't read the entire series I wouldn't start with this one. Because there were things that were in this book that answered a lot of questions from the first three. I wouldn't want you to lose the fun of trying to figure it all out. That's the best part, right? :) And knowing what I knew before going into this book, I thank the other bloggers who read it before me because it really did make it a better book by not having those "preconceived" ideas about it.

I gave this 4 Daisy's because like I said before it moved so slow in places that I wanted to take a nap.  

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Free Friday #2

Every Friday here on Mom With A Kindle I will tell you about one book on Amazon that is free for your KINDLE!! Yes... Because that's what I use so I'll be passing the good ones on to you. ;) **(Please note that product prices and availability are subject to change. Prices and availability were accurate at the time this blog was posted; however, they may differ from those you see when you visit Amazon.com.)


Today's book is

                          Survival by A.M. Hargrove

 (Book 1 of The Guardians of Vesturon Series) 

Summary: (Goodreads)

Survival (Book 1 of the Guardians of Vesturon), a YA paranormal romance

"Maybe I was caught between the two worlds. I was having serious trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality."

While on a backpacking trip in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, nineteen-year-old Maddie Pearce finds her world has been thrown into a vortex and is madly spinning toward the impossible. Abducted by a mad psychopath, Maddie narrowly escapes with her life. But that is only the beginning. Her mysterious rescuer introduces her to a world that Maddie has difficulty accepting as reality. Will this strikingly gorgeous stranger be the key to her future or will she return to her mundane world, scarred from her experience? Follow Maddie as she is forced to make difficult decisions that carry her to mysterious places.

Excerpt…

Then, unexpectedly, three brightly glowing melon-sized balls of light came soaring across the dark sky. When they were a few feet away from me, they elongated into long thin slivers. Moments later, the slivers expanded and then took form into three indistinct shapes. 

I kept blinking my eyes, not trusting what I was seeing. I was positive I was hallucinating. This must be what happens right before you die. 

Then, the indistinct shapes morphed into three men—three very tall, powerfully built men. They were identical in that they were all dressed alike—wearing black hooded cloaks that fell to their ankles. The hoods hid their faces, but I had the strangest feeling they were there to help me. 


Coming soon...
Resurrection, Book 2 of the Guardians of Vesturon

Throwback Thursday #1: ROT & RUIN by Jonathan Maberry

It's THURSDAY and here on "Mom With A Kindle" Thursdays are THROWBACK Thursday: books I have read before I started my blog. They are ones that I loved and want to share with you. Today it is Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry.



Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry


Summary: (Goodreads)

In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn't want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.


Review
My first experience with Jonathan Maberry and zombie books...WOW! It was AWESOME!!

Great story about people trying to survive in a world where there are zombies around the wall of their city and two brothers. One is trying to do what he knows is right by his people and his town and the other one trying to figure out what he wants to do and the truth about his brother and the world around him. Wonderful story about growing up and the relationship of the brothers.

I will read more Jonathan Maberry and zombie books!!! Jonathan is quite the writer.

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Waiting On Wednesday #2

Every Wednesday here on "Mom With A Kindle" I tell you what book I am waiting on. Today it is The Rise Of Nine (Lorien Legacies #3) by Pittacus Lore. I loved the first two books in the series and I am ready for the third one.

Publication Date: August 21, 2012

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 416 pages

Summary: Goodreads

Follow this link for an excerpt: 
http://shelf-life.ew.com/2012/07/25/p...

Until the day I met John Smith, Number Four, I'd been on the run alone, hiding and fighting to stay alive.

Together, we are much more powerful. But it could only last so long before we had to separate to find the others. . . .

I went to Spain to find Seven, and I found even more, including a tenth member of the Garde who escaped from Lorien alive. Ella is younger than the rest of us, but just as brave. Now we're looking for the others--including John.

But so are they.

They caught Number One in Malaysia.
Number Two in England.
And Number Three in Kenya.
They caught me in New York--but I escaped.
I am Number Six. 
They want to finish what they started.
But they'll have to fight us first.

REVIEW: The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse

The Forsaken by Lisa M. Stasse


Summary (Goodreads)

A thought-provoking and exciting start to a riveting new dystopian trilogy.

As an obedient orphan of the U.N.A. (the super-country that was once Mexico, the U.S., and Canada), Alenna learned at an early age to blend in and be quiet—having your parents taken by the police will do that to a girl. But Alenna can’t help but stand out when she fails a test that all sixteen-year-olds have to take: The test says she has a high capacity for brutal violence, and so she is sent to The Wheel, an island where all would-be criminals end up.

The life expectancy of prisoners on The Wheel is just two years, but with dirty, violent, and chaotic conditions, the time seems a lot longer as Alenna is forced to deal with civil wars for land ownership and machines that snatch kids out of their makeshift homes. Desperate, she and the other prisoners concoct a potentially fatal plan to flee the island. Survival may seem impossible, but Alenna is determined to achieve it anyway.


Review:

What do you do when at 16 you have to take a test to see if you are a threat to your government?
What do you do if you ARE found as a threat to your government and are sent to a prison island to live the rest of your life? On this island, life expectancy isn't but about 2 more years AFTER you get there.
This is exactly what happen to Alenna, an orphan from the UNA.

As soon as I watched the book trailer I knew I had to read this book. I have always enjoyed books that the kids have to learn to live on their on *Lord of the Flies*. :)When I was little I used to imagine having to do this. Alenna's parents were taken away when she was 10. She was raised in a orphanage and at 16, she was seen as threat and was sent as a prisoner to The Wheel. The conditions on the Wheel are dirty and there is fighting between groups of kids. There are flying things that snatch up kids with "feelers" when they cross over out of their sectors. They have no idea where the kids are taken once they are snatched. Maybe they are even killed.

When Alenna was dropped on the Wheel she had to grow up fast and learn the ways of the jungle. The author Lisa Stasse wasted no time getting us onto the Wheel. Alenna had to figure out who she could trust, who she couldn't and who she was as a person. She had to learn to fight when the other "villages" blitzed. In the midst of a dirty, violent island, Alenna found a love interest in one of the Hunters, Liam. The story of Alenna, Liam, and the others on the island take you through surviving in the jungle, learning what the island is all about, and trying to get off the island. It was a great read and kept your attention. I really enjoyed this book and definitely suggest this to others fans of YA books.

Good Job Lisa!!! :)

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