How could I resist putting this on my to-read shelf? The second I saw a Sas Christian on the cover of a book I was hooked!

Poor Lukas. I like him.

Pretty good zombie book. I couldn't put it down. ( )

Stepford cheerleaders meet Revenge of the Zombies. Hannah and her father are always on the move and for once she wishes they would settle down. Being the new kid at school doesn't get off to a great start. Only one lonely boy Lukas befriends her and he warns her away from the impossibly, perfectly beautiful, popular lookalike cheerleaders. But Hannah yearns to belong and have friends and despite a disastrous tryout, she ends up on the squad. It's not long before she realizes Lukas was right. I didn't find this story particularly scary or suspenseful; it lacked tension and the inconclusive ending was anticlimactic. Still, young readers developing a taste for horror and science fiction could do far worse than this. ( )

Come on! What is up with YA authors wimping out on the true strength of Zombies? What has happened to the good old zombies needing to feed? The constant craving they have to devour human flesh? The fact that zombies are supposed to be the risen dead?!!

The cover should have been my first warning that this book was not going to go the logical and traditional route of zombies. Don't get me wrong, I think the cover is brilliantly done and definitely drew me in, but what you see on the cover is the exact way the zombies look. No rotting flesh, no dirt and blood covered skin. Just pretty, blond girls.

So, I get that the author is trying to say something about society's need to follow the leader, especially in high school, but it just seemed over done. What non-popular kid in high school hasn't thought of or joked about the popular kids being zombies, or clones of each other? There was potential with the story, but James couldn't pull it off. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he has no idea how teenage girls think.

Hannah starts fairly likable. She's obviously had a rough time constantly moving around the country with her father, and she's like most teens, wanting to fit in, to be popular. That is where I see the similarities ending. Hannah is obsessed, which could have been humorous, if the novel had been going in that direction, and if Hannah hadn't been such a self-absorbed, selfish, and downright rude character. Despite being constantly snubbed by the popular blond girls (zombies) she keeps going back for more, complaining about not having friends, then being a complete b***h to the few students who do try to befriend her. She was stupid and frankly I wish she had died at the end (sorry for the spoiler, but I'm just to angry to not put it in!).

I'm going to skip all of the abusive friendship and romantic relationship stuff because I would simply rant about it forever.

The plot is left with huge dangling threads. There's an almost constant reminder (every single chapter mentions it at least once) that her father was once a police officer, but is now on the run, and yet at the end nothing. We never find out what he did. There's no closure to this story, just a big cop out by James, maybe he was hoping for a series. I sincerely hope not.

The actual writing style has its downfalls as well. James has a habit of dropping the subjects of his sentences. This can work occasionally. Occasionally. Here are some examples I randomly pulled:

(p40) We take a few steps over the grass together before Diana tells me she's got to go the other way. Says good-bye but doesn't walk away.

(p58) He adjusts the tape that wraps around the remote to hold in the batteries. Taps it gently against the palm of his hand...

(p.82) I snatch my backpack up off the ground. Start to stomp up the driveway toward our dilapidated brown house with...

There's just so many I wonder if an editor even read through it. What scares me the most is that one of my 3rd grade students just read one of his children's books and I'd hate for her to think he utilized the same style and she though it was an example of good writing.

As sad as I am to say this. Skip it. ( )

Henceforth to be known as the Miley Cyrus Zombie Book (you'll get it if/after you've read it--the why's spoilery).

Hannah and her father pack up their car and move every few weeks or months, whenever their money woes catch up to them. This time it's to Maplecrest a small--yet ghost-like--town.

Hannah has the moving thing down, who is who in the schools: who the jocks are, the 'it' girls, etc but is this school like all the others? Her new friend Lukas sure doesn't think so. Sure, the cheerleaders-Maggie, Morgan, and a few other M named girls are making her life hell but there's no way the town's anything other than an annoying small town with a hateful group of girls. Right?

My thoughts on this book? I liked the whole zombie premise--it's why I wanted to read the book after all. But I did feel like there wasn't really anything new in the book. Hannah starting the new school went much the same way about any story of a girl being the new girl goes: she knows no one, things suck, one person immediately befriends her, a group of popular girls make her life hell. I don't really have a problem with that 'formula' (as unrealistic as it may be) as long as it's a set up to something else better...

I didn't think it was, though. This book felt like a lot of tell and not a lot of show. There seemed to be a whole lot of Hannah's recollections (even to begin current happenings) or just Hannah telling things...the actual events of the book seemed to be limited. There were also too many similes for my taste (I had to return the book to the library before I could get quotes and Amazon's search won't give me any, but searching 'like' I get 190 returns; not all will be similes but there will be some with 'as' so...).

There was a scene towards the end that I almost felt like te rest of the book was written just to have a story for that scene... and a few things didn't really work out for me but maybe I wasn't reading as carefully by then as I needed to so I'll admit that could be my fault and not the books.

I'm really not sure how much of how I feel about this book is perhaps a dislike of the writing style or if it just doesn't work regardless of liking the style or not. I'm going to rate it based on my opinion, though, (I do try normally to rate on the plot/storyline/characters/etc moreso than the style because that's so much more subjective)...

Book Sp(l)ot Reviews
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