Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

I have seen lots of hype for Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter and  I have enjoyed several of her other books in the past so I decided to give it a shot.

I will admit, it was not what I was expecting for the title. I was expecting something closer to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith - a classic public free domain book altered to include zombies. Instead I spent the first several chapters trying to figure out whether 16 year old Alice Bell was schizophrenic or was actually seeing zombies. Zombies that no one else could see.

The beginning of the book is slow, we are introduced to Alice Bell and her younger sister Emma who are living with their lovely mother and their paranoid father. Alice's father is obsessed with the monsters that go bump in the night to the point of building a specially fortified house - the walls have steel in them. He see's monsters that only come out in the night and is tyrannical about being locked down in the house at night. No sleep overs for the girls, no school events that last until after sunset. But Emma has her heart set on performing in her ballet recital on Alice's sixteenth birthday and Alice will do whatever she can to make that dream come true. Sadly their night comes to a tragic end when Alice and her family are in a fatal car accident that leaves Alice as the sole survivor.

Alice is moved to another town to live with her grandparents where she makes friends with Kat, a girl she met while in the hospital after her accident. On the first day of school Alice runs in to the mysterious Cole and when they lock eyes weird things begin to happen.

It is not long after this that Alice finds out the zombies are real and she is locked in to a battle of good versus evil. With some new friends and enemies at her side she seeks revenge on the zombies that caused her family's car accident.

I rated this book a 3.5 out of 5. It was well done but a bit slow at times. It is however a very interesting take on the zombies, Gena Showalter writes the zombies as a creature of the spirit realm rather than the physical realm. I do like that in this book what happens to your spirit effects your physical body.

Sadly, the second book in this series doesn't come out until some time later this year, I couldn't pin down an exact date.

Recommendations:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith - This book is the original book by Jane Austen with zombies added in for fun. I really enjoyed reading this version while I struggled through the original Pride and Prejudice. 

Dearly Departed by Lia Habel - This is not your traditional zombie book. In this book zombies are still capable of higher brain function, they just happen to be dead.