From my TBR shelf...

 

Home With the Dead by PJ Dziekan

I like zombie apocalypse books, and I bought this one after reading Dziekan's first book, Walking With the Dead. It continues the story of Sarah and Mick, Ryan and Becca and the others. Zombies are still a threat, but so are other humans. And finding enough food and other needed supplies in order to stay alive is becoming a problem. To add to their worries, Sarah just found out she's pregnant.

This novel is action-packed and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. Sarah, as the leader of their group, is strong, independent, stubborn, and tough. I like her a lot; and I love her relationship with Mick. There's a lot of language and zombie gore in this one, but there's also friendship, family, loyalty, survival, and hope. If you like a good zombie read, this is an entertaining one. (Though you should probably read Walking With the Dead first.)

Happy Reading!

P.S. This book counts towards the Backlist Reader Challenge hosted by The Bookwyrm's Hoard.

Still reading from my own shelves....

Title & Author:  Walking With the Dead by P.J. Dziekan

Why I bought it:  I was in the mood for a zombie apocalypse book sometime last year, and my library didn't have this one, so I bought it. (And then ended up not reading it until now.)

First line:  Sarah missed the end of the world because of the flu.

The plot in brief:  A bunch of strangers band together in order to survive the swarms of the undead:  college student, Sarah, brothers Ryan and Mick, Becca, and six-year-old Elizabeth.

My thoughts:  This is a pretty decent zombie read. It's a little predictable. And there are a few flaws here and there, but overall I thought it was entertaining and fun. Some of the flaws? The dialogue felt a little stilted in a few places, but just at the beginning. And Ryan, Becca and Sarah all overreacted at times in ways that didn't feel authentic (which a little more initial character development would have easily solved). And towards the end of the book the band of survivors just happen to find an undisturbed food distribution center with boxes and boxes of food...which felt a little too convenient, if you know what I mean. Oh, and there are too many f-bombs in the first chapter. But there are good things, too. The prose reads well. The characters grow and get more likable over the course of the book. It's fast-paced and never bogs down. I liked Mick right from the start. I also liked the way the characters worked together to survive, and how each one had their own strengths and weaknesses. Plus, there are zombies. All in all, I ended up liking this one enough to want to buy the sequel, Home With the Dead, sometime in the near future. Although my library MIGHT open up for curbside checkouts next week, so I might not need to keep buying new books. (Fingers crossed!)

My rating:  3.5/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

From my TBR shelf...

Title & Author:  Haven by Laury Falter

Why I bought it:  Have I mentioned how much I like disaster/survival novels? Including zombie apocalypse ones? Which is why I couldn't resist buying this particular book.

The premise:  Kennedy's at her high school when the zombie apocalypse beings. Only she and four other teens--Doc, Beverly, Mei and Harrison--manage to make it safely inside. At least Kennedy has some survival skills courtesy of her military father to help them survive. But the odds are against them. Then there's Harrison, who has a secret of his own. One that could affect ... or infect .... them all.

My thoughts:  I'd classify this YA novel as "survival lite". While there are several intense encounters with the Infected, the author spends more time focusing on Kennedy and Harrison, and their respective pasts and growing relationship. Which I actually didn't mind because I liked both of them. But it did lessen the suspense of whether or not they were going to survive. And Harrison's big secret was pretty obvious and easy to figure out. So no real tension there either. And being in the high school with food and shelter and safety meant the five teens' survival felt pretty easy at times. Despite these few flaws, I still enjoyed this one. It's well-written, and it reads fast, and it's also entertaining and fun. Will I read the sequel? Probably not. But I'm not sorry I read this one.

My rating:  3/5 stars.

Happy Reading!

P.S. This  one also counts as another book towards my Backlist Reader Challenge 2019 goal, a fun reading challenge that focuses on reading the books on your TBR shelf and on your TBR list. 

Similar read:
Virulent: The Release by Shelbi Wescott

Red Hill

"With all the television shows, comics, books, and movies about the undead, it shouldn't have been a surprise that somebody was finally both smart and crazy enough to try and make it a reality. I know the world ended on a Friday. It was the last day I saw my children."

Scarlet, a single mom, is at work at the hospital when it all begins; her two daughters are with her ex-husband. Now all she can think about is finding her daughters and getting them to safety at Red Hill Ranch.

"I couldn't do this if I wasn't with them. I needed to see Jenna roll her eyes at me again, and for Halle to interrupt me. They needed me to tell them that everything would be okay. We couldn't survive the end of the world without each other. I didn't want to."

Miranda and her sister, Ashley (and their two boyfriends) are also trying to get to Red Hill Ranch. It's their father's country house and a beckoning sanctuary from all the chaos and violence surrounding them. But they're miles away, and the roads are clogged with cars, terrified people...and zombies.

"We passed more people, unsure of who was running and who was chasing. A couple of times people screamed at me to stop, begged me to help them, but stopping always meant dying in the movies, and I was barely eighteen. I wasn't sure how long we would survive, but I knew I wasn't dying on day one of the f**king zombie apocalypse."

Nathan's wife chose this day of all days to leave him. Now it's up to him to keep his young daughter, Zoe, safe. But how is he supposed to do that when nothing in the world is safe, or even sane, any more?

"Watching a movie about zombies is one thing. Watching zombies outside your windows was another. The movies didn't talk about that...how terrifying each moment truly was. I tried not to think about tomorrow, or that we would still be fighting for our lives every day from now on. I glanced back at Zoe, and choked back the sadness welling up in my throat. I didn't want her to grow up in a world like this."

Page-turning action and suspense, along with some pretty good characters, make this novel by Jamie McGuire a better-than-average zombie read. I was rooting for the whole group to survive. (Never a realistic hope in any zombie novel; someone you like always dies!) The first half reads the best; the story slows a bit towards the end, especially in regards to Scarlett and her daughters. Overall, though this novel offers lots of tension and violence, smart survival, sad deaths, humor, friendship and hope.

Happy Reading! 

Another zombie read...

"Twenty-two days. Michael lifted his finger from the Sharpie'd tally in his journal. Wow. Man. Twenty-two days since Halloween. Twenty-two days since Michael followed the Game Master's instructions and carried Patrick through a door into the night and saw their first Bellow. Twenty-two days since that moment, since the world seemed to end, but then instantaneously resurrected to a frightening and beautiful life."

T. Michael Martin's The End Games is a novel about zombies (called Bellows here) and surviving the end of the world. It is also a novel about love and loyalty between two brothers. Because seventeen-year-old Michael Faris will do anything to protect his little brother, Patrick. Even invent a Game involving the Bellows and earning points and following a mysterious Game Master's instructions until they reach the Safe Zone in Charleston, West Virginia, where they hope to find their mom. And five-year-old Patrick, who suffers from extreme anxiety, believes and plays along. Because Michael is his hero. But it's not just the undead that they have to worry about. There's the crazy cult of religious fanatics in Coaltown, and the army soldier in Charleston who promises to protect them. The one thing Michael knows for sure is that he has to keep his little brother safe.

"Because Patrick ... looked so small, so sweet, that Michael thought, not for the first or final time, that he would shoot all the monsters in the world he had to, he would do anything to reach the Safe Zone in the capital city of Charleston, to win the Game for Patrick."

There are a lot of mediocre and disappointing zombie reads out there, but this is one of the good ones. I liked Martin's style of writing and his take on the undead is different and fun. But his main focus is on his characters. I may not have liked all of them, but I did really like Michael. And as I learned more about his and Patrick's back story, I liked him even more. This entertaining apocalyptic novel ended up being a perfect end-of-summer read for me.

Happy Reading!

Other good zombie reads:

Devil's Wake

Positive 

Feed
Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End
World War Z

Going Viral ...

"Something is happening in Russia. Something huge .... According to the Ministry of Health, we've reached the 'breaking point' in an epidemic, and a pandemic is now inevitable. It should hit Spain in a matter of days, if it's not here already. It happened so fast--just two weeks since it started .... The strangest part is the official secrecy surrounding the disease. No symptoms have been made public; neither has its incubation period, or how many people have died. Nothing. All we know is that it's highly contagious, it's very lethal, and its spreading .... News of the plague has been reported from every corner of the planet. The epidemic is now global."

I know half of you will probably stop reading this review when you come to the word 'zombie'. And that's okay. Zombie apocalypse novels are not everyone's cup of tea. But I like them. And Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End by Manel Loureiro is better than most. It takes place in Spain. The main character, like the author, is a lawyer who lives and works in Galicia. He has a cat named Lucullus. And he narrates his story, and the end of the world, in a series of blog posts, which become journal entries when the power and internet go out. Before this crises, 'zombie' wasn't even part of his vocabulary; I mean, the man doesn't even know how to use a gun. But he's going to have to learn if he wants to survive. As the only living human among an endless zombie hoard, it's going to take everything he's got just to stay alive.

"I'd just learned an important lesson. The undead weren't the only things that could kill me. Accidents, disease, hunger--all the normal causes of death--were just lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance. If I weren't careful, they'd catch me. I'd only been thinking about my stalkers. I'd forgotten something very basic: man is a fragile being."

My one problem with this book is all the f-bombs in it; I could have done without ALL of those, but other than that I liked this novel. I liked the pacing, the narration, and the rapidly devolving world. And I liked Lucullus, his cat. It's another zombie apocalypse at its terrifying best (or worst).

Happy Reading! 

Other great zombie reads:

     World War Z by Max Brooks

     Autumn by David Moody

     Devil's Wake by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due

     This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

     Zombie Haiku by Ryan Mecum

     Feed by Mira Grant

     Married With Zombies by Jesse Petersen

World War Z by Max Brooks

     "The boy's skin was as cold and gray as the cement on which he lay.  I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.  His eyes were wild, wide and sunken back in their sockets.  They remained locked on my like a predatory beast."

 At first, I wasn't sure I was going to like this book because it's written as a series of interviews rather than a regular fictional story, but I quickly got caught up in each of the personal narratives.  It starts with the first outbreak in China and continues on with the rapid spread of "a new viral outbreak that first eliminated its victim, then reanimated his corpse into some kind of homicidal berzerker."  Each firsthand account gives you another piece of the larger puzzle:  the spreading contagion, the failed attempts to contain it, the growing panic, the military strikes, the stories of those who survived and those who died, the successes and failures, and what's left of the world at the end of the Zombie War.

 World War Z is a uniquely-told and compelling read.  I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading it, but I'm glad I finally did.  The movie version of World War Z comes out this June.  And while I can't quite picture how they're going to turn this book into a movie, I can't wait to see how they do it.