Zombie novel with a twist. Survival in an apartment block during a zombie plague. But why can this teenage girl walk among them? ( )

It's the zombie apocalypse, and a handful of survivors are holed up in a Manhattan apartment building, caught between a seething mass of the undead out in the street and a seething mass of toxic masculinity inside. There's kind of an interesting premise for a zombie story here, and a bit of humor and such, but, honestly, it really is primarily just a constant parade of dysfunctional male horniness, from the pathetic to the downright psychopathic. There are some female characters, mind you. There's the one, for instance, who somehow manages to exist mostly only in relationship to men and/or babies even when we're in her POV. And the plot device one, whose primary trait is her lack of a personality. I don't mean that she's written two-dimensionally, either. I mean, that's literally her deliberate defining characteristic, leaving her free to be used, abused, and lusted after by men without the hindrance of actually having any opinions about it.

And, OK, there is a bit of a satiric, or at least sardonic flavor to all of this, or a vague attempt at one, anyway. Fingerman certainly isn't putting these guys forward as role models, especially the vile frat boy rapist character. But, still. Ugh. It's not even so much that it's all highly unpleasant. Zombie novels are allowed to be unpleasant. It's that it gets so tedious. At one point, I literally yelled "I'm tired of hearing about your fucking boner!" at the page. Fortunately, I was alone at the time.

Rating: 2.5/5. Usually, books that I rate that low have poorer writing than this one, just on a prose level. But in this case the decent-enough writing is probably the main thing saving it from a lower rating still. ( )

This is the first time I write a review and it's because this book deserves it. Not in a good way, though. I can't believe how people rate it 4 stars. This book is not only unbelievably slow, but extremely uneventful. It takes a whole 150 pages to present us with an exciting moment. Not gonna lie, the premise sounded good and that's why I picked it up but it takes effin' long to get to the plot. Let me tell you that these characters are some of the most sexist, racist and overall disgusting pigs you'll ever read about. One would think that with the amount of time we spend getting to know them and just in their head overall, the author would invest some time on character development, well guess not. I won't bother with the rest of the novel so I read some spoilery reviews on how it ends and it's freaking disappointing. The plot had so much potential and so much mystery surrounding it, and to only get a paragraph explaining the deal is a joke. I think the best part of the novel are the zombie drawings on some of the pages, cause not even the actual zombies were memorable.
I really don't recommend this novel unless you like disgusting characters, extremely slow plots, and bad endings. I wouldn't even condemn the people I hate to reading this book. ( )

Overall, bleak and unoriginal. Any possible interesting arc was nixed in favor of something gory or violent at random. The story clearly ripped off bits from other zombie books like The Walking Dead - no pun intended. A much better book of this genre is Zombie, Ohio. ( )

Overall, bleak and unoriginal. Any possible interesting arc was nixed in favor of something gory or violent at random. The story clearly ripped off bits from other zombie books like The Walking Dead - no pun intended. A much better book of this genre is Zombie, Ohio. ( )