Goodreads: Internal Lockdown

Author: Ernie Quatrani

Published: 30th October 2018 (Prodigy Gold Books)

Source: Copy from Publisher

Rating: 4/5 (Really liked it)

Official Summary: “Over a morning, you can tend to your garden, paint a room, watch the morning news repeat its talking points. Over a morning, you can do the laundry or visit the doctor for a check-up; you can run errands…Over a morning, you can stop a school in its track, or lockdown an AP English class. Over a morning, you can get revenge.
Green Hill is a small, ordinary Pennsylvania town where nothing ever happens until the morning its normalcy is crushed by a shocking act of violence. One morning the school is interrupted by the frantic announcement calling for a lockdown. AP English teacher, Mike Zarlapski, swings into action, following the lockdown procedures. Although his students help pile as many desks in front of the classroom door as possible, their panic is not allayed as they communicate with what is now the outside world first-in responders, police entering the building, and the shooters who remain at large via cellphone.

Internal Lockdown, Ernie Quatrani’s, first novel is raw, honest, and his most important novel, although it’s his first. The book is told in a straightforward style from different viewpoints, but mostly through the lens of the kids locked in the classroom. Before there was Columbine, a student Mr. Quatrani taught murdered a classmate in a biology lab. The student walked out of the high school after deciding against shooting up the cafeteria. Mr. Quatrani was in the cafeteria proctoring a study hall. As a high school teacher, he functioned in a world where lockdown drills became routine, but there was much more to a lockdown than can be imagined, as Internal Lockdown reveals. The novel is based on his unfortunate experience and years of research.” – Goodreads

Review: You know with most horror movies, you sit there and scream at the character not to do something? That didn’t happen once with this, it felt real and honest. There was no added sunshine. People who are put in the most worse position in their lives will throw up, will have accidents. It is human nature.

The story was so gripping, I sat there rooting for the people. I didn’t want to see more people dying. The Author did an extremely good job, making you feel attached to one of the classrooms. You wanted to see them all get out alive. It was also great to see that different classrooms had didn’t methods. Zarlapski group barricaded and got ‘weapons’ ready. While others did nothing but sit there. Some teacher’s panicked. Most didn’t. Again human nature, no one is the same in a situation like that.

I just loved the crime elements to everything. You were finding out things as soon as other people were finding out stuff. You had to put it all together, same with them. It took you on a ride with them.

(Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Publisher. Does not affect my review)