Bring Out Your Dead (Katie MacAlister)

It's very likely you may have read this story before, as it was published in the anthology Just One Sip. Interestingly enough that was an anthology about vampires. A very versatile story this is!

Ysabelle is a zombie counselor, or as they prefer to be called a Functionally Deceased counselor. Sebastian, is a Dark One, or a vampire if you prefer. This story ties directly in with her Dark Ones novels.

I liked Ysabelle--she wasn't exactly your run of the mill sort of heroine and was sincere in her efforts to help the functionally deceased. They're a rather bossy lot I have to say. Nothing is ever good enough! I've loved Sebastian (he had minor roles in at least one other novel) for a while yet and it was fun watching his deal with all the zombies and convince Ysabelle he's nothing like her other five husbands. There's also the matter of how their relationship will effect Ysabelle's friend, the fact a demon lord wants Ysabelle as a prized trophy and Sebastian is big on revenge...but hey no one said true love was easy.

Gentleman Prefer Voodoo (Angie Fox)

Anytime a woman has the thought 'I can Summon Mr. Right!' you know things are going to go wonky. Except when Fox makes things go wonky its never quite what you expect and I love her for it. Cause nothing says true love like voodoo right?

Amie has run a successful voodoo shop for the last nine years, ignoring the fact she hasn't had a boyfriend in all that time. Except, as her friendly Kongamato Isoke likes to remind her, her love magic needs for it to be reciprocated and given back to her, or she'll dry up like a husk as her mother did.

Isoke was possibly my favorite part of the story. Kind of a dinosaur like mythological creature (I think), he comes off as a well-meaning relative that's particularly good at guilt complexes to get what he wants. The introduction of Amie's 'ideal man' is also full of rather hilarious one-liners on his part. Dante can't help himself--he's Spanish, so he's got a silver tongue.

What I liked best about this is that the story had plenty of humor as well as romance. Amie is almost obsessively wary of men and Dante had never been the patient sort. Between their verbal sparring and Isoke's 'Just get over it!' attitude, it made for an amusing and entertaining read.

Zombiewood Confidential (Marianne Mancusi)

Automatic props for paying homage to the great Zombie director George Romero. Strike that, Mancusi gets a whole van of props for paying homage to pop culture icons and making hilarious caricatures of themselves.

This was an amusing, sweet romance of never judging a book by its cover...with zombies. More romance titles needs zombies in them--actually just about every genre can dare to have more zombies if they handle it with the wit that Mancusi does.

Mason Marks is a parody of a bunch of different Hollywood stars (especially certain singing high school musical ones...) while Scarlett is your typical sweet-natured down home gal in the big city. As Mason remarks at one point--she's send off to the heyday of Hollywood sweethearts.

Word to the wise: don't trust Zombie movie directors on budget cuts. Just saying.

Every Part of You (Lisa Cach)

This story began really slow and didn't seem to be part of the collection. The focus seemed to be on Angelica and Tom's burgeoning relationship and less on the hoo-ha going on around them.

I do think that Cach had a pretty wicked idea with the implants. Considering the high level of plastic surgery being done today, it isn't surprising that something of that nature would occur to a writer.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to enjoy the story and by the end of it, was completely drained of any good feeling towards it. I think what I was expecting and what the story delivered were on two different wavelengths completely. ( )

Zombie romance: still not for me. ( )

I skipped over the first two stories after the first chapters. The magical is just not for me. I gave up on the last story when it delved into the silly - if you're gonna do zombies, do zombies and don't cute it up, especially after making the reader wait for the actual zombies.

The third story by Marianne Mancusi was a treat, though, with quite a few laugh out loud moments. The image of a hero fighting zombies with his tiny little dog strapped to his body was fantastic and puts Mancusi's name on my t-read list. This story gets four stars, but overall the anthology gets two stars. ( )

A real cracker of an anthology. Zombies and Romance?? Oh yeah! I have come across most of these authors already, and must admit that was what swayed my purchase. But I did see some talent in some authors I had not come across before and checking out their other works. ( )

My mother bought me this book on one of her trips to Target as a joke. She reads lots of romance novels and I mock her mercilessly because of their practically X-rated covers and the fact that she’s ashamed to read them in public. She thought it was weird and funny that romance stories about zombies where written at all. Anyway, I finally mustered up the will to read this book and I have to say that it wasn’t all bad. Here’s a breakdown of the four short stories and their ratings.

**Bring Out Your Dead by Katie MacAlister**

This story introduces Ysabelle, the counselor for revenants (AKA zombies), part time tutor, and full time owner of two souls, as she runs into a man by chance on her way to her tutoring job and passionately kisses him. Shortly after, she’s attacked by a demon and his minion imps. The random stranger that she kissed saves her and she heads off to her job. Her charge is a very strange boy named Damian who is boarding up and fortifying the upstairs windows in fear of a Dark One (AKA vampire) that will be trying to kill them. The Dark One shows up and it’s the random kissing stranger. His name is Sebastian and he seeks revenge against Damian’s father who sold him out to a powerful demon named Asmodeus. To complicate things, he has decided that Ysabelle is his Beloved that will grant him a soul and be his for eternity. Can Ysabelle avoid or Asmodeus while evading Sebastian’s strong overtures?

This is my least favorite of the stories. In just the first chapter, there are so many things introduced and explained rather than shown that it made the story convoluted and confusing. This story would have been better suited as a full length novel. The plot is complex (as seen in the summary) and there is an entirely new world to explain. The premise is interesting, but the follow through isn’t there. I don’t like that the story is about 5/6 typical vampire romance versus the other tiny 1/6 that’s about zombies. This story feels like the odd story out as a result. There are also many typos and spelling errors that really bothered me. In addition, each chapter jumps ahead in time after the end of the last chapter, leading the characters to fill in the blanks by talking about it. I would really rather just see what happened and I prefer not to rely on the characters describing it to me every single chapter.

I found the characters generally unlikeable. Sebastian in particular is insufferable with his forceful attempted seduction of Ysabelle before they know each other at all. Another extremely annoying character is Sally, Ysabelle’s spirit guide. She consistently speaks in the most infuriating mixture of very bad French and English. I don’t know if it is supposed to be funny, but it really made the story hard for me to finish. It seems as if the author didn’t know enough French grammar to make a properly speaking character and this awful character’s mode of speech was the fall back. There is literally no reason why this character needs to be there. The only part I really like is the end with its small surprising twist.

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins

**Gentlemen Prefer Voodoo by Angie Fox**

Amie Baptiste has no man in her life, but she has a fulfilling life with a successful business. She wants to find love, but also doesn’t want to turn into her mother, who had a great many lovers, all who left her broken and sad. Being a voodoo practitioner, she decides to use a spell to find her soulmate. The spell works in that it brought her an incredibly handsome man named Dante, but she didn’t expect that he would be dead. Amie immediately tries to rid herself of him, but he’s no ordinary zombie. He now has three days to woo her or he will return to his grave forever.

This story is really cute. The basic story line is similar to the first story in that two people meet and immediately fall in love, but the woman is in denial and the man has to make her see their love. Angie Fox made the characters much more endearing, thus making the basic plot seem less male chauvinist dominated. Dante is a total sweetheart. He is willing to do anything for Amie, even if it means his permanent death. I like how his tragic past is revealed, giving his character layers as the story progresses. My favorite character of the story is Isoke,a Kagamoto dragon with a three foot wingspan. This mini dragon is the greatest comic relief. It’s just the right amount in the right places.

This story succeeds in that the plot is fairly simple with few characters that can be developed easily, without confusion and unnecessary complexities.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

**Zombiewood Confidential by Marianne Mancusi**

Romeo George’s new zombie film, Isle of the Living Dead, is filming on a desert island, starring action star Mason Mark and high maintenance, demanding Cissy Max. Derek, the makeup artist, just hired Scarlet because he was desperate to fill the position even if she hadn’t quite finished cosmetology school yet. She has had a huge crush on Mason Mark since his days as a singing, dancing child star, but knows that people like that thrive off of fawning peons and try to take advantage of them. Mason really likes Scarlet as well, but is contracted to be in a relationship with the insufferable Cissy by the studio to generate interest for the film. While all this drama is going on, the extras playing the zombies are acting in increasingly strange ways, including biting the stars and repeatedly observing how delicious Mason’s dog smells. When the crew and extras keep disappearing, Scarlet thinks there is something really wrong. With this zombie film come true, can she and Mason stop the zombie apocalypse alone on a desert island?

This is one of my favorite stories of the anthology. The return to the flesh-eating variety of zombie is refreshing and makes me feel right at home. The writing flows really well, making it an enjoyable, fast read. Humor is infused throughout the story along with the typical romance conventions. It’s kind of like a more romance focused Shaun of the Dead. The romance aspect succeeds well in organically establishing the attraction between Scarlet and Mason, which made me care about the couple. In the first two stories, there really wasn’t any build up to the romance which made the story flat and made me more unwilling to suspend my disbelief. The two stars and the director are obvious parodies of famous zombie film directors, macho action stars, and slutty starlets, but there is a dimension to them that also makes them good, relatable characters. Scarlet serves as the everygirl of the story: just a normal person trying to make a living and pay her rent. Although she is justifiably horrified by the zombies and at having to kill one of her friends, she is no simpering damsel in distress. I really like her and I rooted for her through the whole story. The ending is kind of an implausible romance ending with a twist. Overall, I’d say this story rocked.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

**Every Part of You by Lisa Cach**

Angelica Sequiera is in Dr. Velazquez’s office to just fill in 6 shallow acne scars in her face with fat from her chin. Nothing major. She doesn’t exactly want to advertise this, but a rude surfer dude type guy named Tom Haggerty keeps asking her probing and insulting questions. She gets the procedure done and while she is under anesthetic that makes her loopy, the doctor asks if she wants Phi-Tox, a formula of Botox that he has made himself. She resists, but the doctor skillfully manipulates her and takes advantage of her loopy state and injects her. Later, Tom gets her phone number from her friend that works at the plastic surgeon’s office and she reluctantly goes on a date with him. They don’t mesh well at first, but through conversation, sailing, and picnics, they grow to fall in love. After she comes back from their trip, there are increasing cases of women bingeing on sweets, including herself and her friend. They soon realize that women are turning into zombies that only crave sugar because in a last ditch effort to stave off the paralyzing effects of Phi-Tox. It’s only a matter of time before the effect gets worse in Angelica. Can she and Tom find an antidote and save Dr. Velazquez’s clients from certain death?

This is the other story that I enjoyed the most in this book. Instead of a straight romance story, this one focuses on a larger message about how the expectations of society can become poisonous and make us into zombies that have no will of our own. The women in the story all get plastic surgery based on the mass media’s vision of the ideal woman and how others (like creepy, manipulative Dr. Velazquez) view them. Tom represents what true love should be: a man that will love every part of you as you are. He is my favorite character with his surfer dude demeanor, frank way of talking to people, and hidden layers that people who make assumptions about him would never see. The first things he notices about Angelica are the very things she has been led to think need to change to be beautiful: her nose, her breasts, and her butt. Unlike those trying to push surgery on her, he finds these characteristics of hers sexy and unique compared to the typical vision of what beautiful women should look like. The romance between Tom and Angelica is sweet and steamy. This is easily the hottest story of the book, so if you don’t like sex scenes, you should stay away from this one. I really like how the story starts as a typical romantic comedy and then ends with a crazy zombie epidemic. Overall, this story is fun, sexy, and sends an important message to its readers.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins ( )