Review Detail

I was originally drawn to Survive because it looked similar to Courtney Summers’s This Is Not a Test. No zombies, of course, but a similar set-up: suicidal girl is put in a position where she has to fight for her life. I liked This Is Not a Test, so I figured I might like Survive.

Looking at others’ opinions of Survive, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that I should not have liked this book as much as I did. Most readers seemed to like Morel’s premise but saw several plotholes, which I acknowledge may have existed. But for some really weird reason, I loved Survive. Absolutely loved it. The only excuse I have is the ending/last half of the book—awesome, emotional, rip your heart out and stomp on it stuff.

Jane Solis, the narrator, wasn’t a particularly stand-out character for me. Some of her motivations were a little difficult to understand, or maybe just didn’t make sense at all. Yet while she wasn’t a great character, I came to love Jane just for what she went through.

However, the most important part of this book was the emotional responses I found in myself. Jane and Paul experienced a couple of near-death encounters, and I was always holding my breath to make sure nothing bad happened, except it did, and when you couldn’t believe that things could get worse, they did.

I’m a sucker for a tearjerker ending—IF it’s well done and not sappy or unspeakably depressing. Unhappy endings are my favorite, as long as they match certain criteria. And the final fifty pages of Survive were awesome. Yes, awesome.
I have absolutely no idea why I like this as much as I do. Survive was really…amazing. I don’t know why, but it was. And I think I’m one of the few who thinks so. Which is weird, because I’m pretty harsh with my books, as opposed to gushy. Hmm…