Britney Lewis

"...and that was the thing about love. It wasn't a printed piece of the same thing. It was crooked and unfocused sometimes. It depleted us, consumed our brains, ripped our hearts from our chests, turned us into the undead."

The recurring theme of grief and love has been appearing in all my recent reads and I have loved the unique ways that authors have presented the interconnectedness of the two. The Undead Truth of Us by Britney S. Lewis was my mist recent read. In this one, Lewis uses surrealism and the metaphor of zombies and the state of being undead to take our protagonist Zharie through the process of grief and love after losing her mother. Zharie has stopped living her life and has closed herself off to the idea of love due to the sudden death of her mother which left her with more questions than answers.

The writing style and prose was the star of the show. It was poetic, beautiful, reflective, and powerful. I have some many passages highlighted because they either made me pause to take a breath or forced me to ponder more deeply. This story is slow paced yet intentional in the ways that Lewis evokes certain emotions. I was sad throughout most of it because the writing thrusts you into Zharie's grief on a personal level. Her pain was so hard to read at times. The elements of surrealism were the perfect touches that blended the process of grief and love together. As a reader, you are challenged and prodded to question reality.

Even though plotwise, not a lot happens until almost the end, the dissection of grief and love by the main character keep you engaged. The tone is soft and quiet, just like Zharie but as she finds her voice, the tone of the writing becomes louder and more powerful. Even though this was a debut novel, I can already tell that Lewis has so much to say especially about the arts and healing. My biggest takeaway is that grief and love can both feel like death and make the world feel like limbo, an in between state that leaves you stuck. Thank you @disneybooks for the gifted copy.… (meer)

Zharie Young has just watched her mother slowly turn into a zombie and then die. Zharie is filled with grief, it has just been her and her mother for all of her sixteen year of life. Now, Zharie is certain she is seeing other zombies all over, her very own zombie apocalypse. When her new neighbor, Bo shows signs of zombification, Zharie decides to befriend him and get to the bottom of her zombie visions. In her relationship with Bo, Zharie unpacks her grief from her mother, anger at her birth father and learns her capacity for love.

The Undead Truth of Us is an amazing young adult contemporary novel that explores grief, loss and love through a metaphorical zombie. From the first chapter I was hooked as Zharie watched her mom deteriorate and die. I enjoyed being thrown into Zharie's abstract world as she navigated around zombies that nobody else seemed to see. Her journey is immensely interesting as she sets out to deal with zombies but instead deals with a bevy of heavy emotions and inner turmoil. The writing melds together Zharie's view of the world and reality in a natural way, I wasn't wondering what was real and what wasn't. Everything Zharie saw was real to her in a way that made her world make sense. I loved Zharie and her mother's shared talent and passion for West Coast Swing and reading about Zharie's memories of her. Zharie and Bo's relationship was very natural, Bo's zombie proclivities not only helped Zharie dig into her issues, but learn how to form another type of relationship. Overall, The Undead Truth of Us is amazingly written, emotionally driven and has wonderful characters.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.… (meer)