By Gena Showalter
Hardcover, 404 pages
Published September 25th 2012 by Harlequin Teen
ISBN 0373210582 (ISBN13: 9780373210589)


Blurb

She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real…

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies…

The Good

  1. The unique zombie mythology.  Forget everything you know about zombies, because Showalter pretty much throws everything out the window. Surprisingly, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Zombies are still out for flesh—but they’re no longer rotting bodies, they’re spirits. Really interesting concept.

  2. Ali’s voice.  The narration done by Ali is believable and compulsively readable.

  3. The book binding.  I am someone who picks books to read based off their covers—I’ll admit it, and this book definitely doesn’t disappoint. Even the lime green flyleaves are decorated with cute little skulls. Adorable.


The Bad

  1. The complete lack of Alice references.  If this book was just a zombie book, it would be a fantastic zombie book. Unfortunately for Showalter, this book was advertised as an Alice in Wonderland mashup, which is definitely was NOT. Aside from a rabbit-shaped cloud and the name of the main character, there are pretty much no references whatsoever to Lewis Carroll’s classic. VERY disappointing.

  2. Cole.  Cole is constantly telling Alice what to do and even physically forces her to do his bidding numerous times throughout the book. His bad boy persona is painted as as desirable, which I think is a really dangerous suggestion in a book for teen girls.  Do we really want teenagers wandering around thinking this kind of behavior is okay, or even worse, seeking it out in potential boyfriends?  This is just irresponsible.


Overall Rating

I went into reading this hoping for a mashup of Alice in Wonderland with zombies in it. What I got was a pretty well written zombie novel with two slight references to the classic I know and love. For this reason, this book was very disappointing for me and I can’t give it more than a mediocre rating.