Nine of the best YA survival thrillers

Rektok Ross is the pen name of Liani Kotcher, a trial attorney turned award-winning young adult author and book blogger. An avid reader since childhood, Kotcher writes exactly the kind of books she loves to escape into herself: exciting thrillers with strong female leads, swoon-worthy love interests, and life-changing moments. She graduated from the University of Florida School of Journalism and obtained her juris doctorate at the University of Miami School of Law. Originally from South Florida, she currently splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles with her husband, stepkids, and her dogs.

Ross's debut YA survival thriller is Ski Weekend.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine favorite YA survival thrillers, including:

This Is Not A Test by Courtney Summers

Okay, so this one does have zombies, but the book is really not about zombies at all. The biggest danger to the teens in This Is Not A Test are themselves. After a zombie apocalypse, six students take cover in their high school hoping to survive. One bite from the zombies swarming outside is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monster, but to protagonist 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. As Sloane eagerly waits for death, she’s forced to witness the end-of-days through the eyes of five people who actually do want to live. This book is both exciting and bleak—a perfect combination for a survival tale—and Summers’s writing is brilliant.

Read about the other entries on the list.

This Is Not A Test is among Samantha Randolph's twelve hopeful YA books to brighten your day and Dahlia Adler's five best YA books outside the contemporary genre.

The Page 69 Test: This Is Not a Test.

--Marshal Zeringue