Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller

32 reviews

missladysky's review

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dark emotional funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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vixenreader's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Although I’m still mad at Leah, and the ending is open-ended, this book is filled with realistic, loveable characters, great gore, great action, and a message of fighting for your community. 

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fuzzball's review

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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sommermeyer27's review

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adventurous challenging dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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lostgwennel's review

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adventurous dark funny sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This was really fun! Lots of books “read like movies” and it’s not always a good thing, but this one does such a great job with the campy horror movie imagery, the foreshadowing, following different characters for a scene or two to show their perspective etc. However Wendy was a really unpleasant narrator and frustrated me. It was obviously intentional, but she didn’t change a whole lot by the end, so the story as a whole (and her character arc) doesn’t feel resolved.

The narration over-explains things sometimes, like what transphobia is or why the police are bad, which can be a little annoying because it feels like it doesn’t trust the reader to know these things or be able to infer them from the text.

I saw the Seabrook twist coming a mile off, but I didn’t expect Leah’s involvement, so that was a fun surprise!


My favourite parts of the book were butch Beau, token nonbinary Sunshine, and the setting of San Lazaro (reading this in November in SW England, every time I read a description of the sun I felt like vitamin D was radiating off the pages)

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dogoodwithbooks's review

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dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Closed Door Mods: Chapter 1 (some parts), Chapter 12 

For a horror novel, The Z Word is a kind of fun book to read. Adopting the various tropes associated with zombie apocalypses media and infusing her own spins on those tropes, King-Miller writes a darkly funny horror novel about a misfit group trying to save Pride from an sudden outburst of zombies. It’s very easy to picture the different elements of this book, from the various Pride festivities to glimpses into the victims of the zombie outbreak, and I liked how King-Miller used her writing to achieve that goal. There are quite a bit of gore/jump scare moments, but those depictions aren’t excessively graphic (only to the point of what’s needed for this type of story). Fans of Andrew Joseph White will appreciate the thematic elements of LGBTQ+ people fighting back against absolutely horrible circumstances as well as the portrayals of complex and messy queer characters in The Z Word. If you’re looking for a horror novel featuring Sapphic MCs, written with a dark sense of humor, and/or has a found family trope, you should keep your eye out for this book.

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steph_weigle's review

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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smothermewithscifi's review

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dark emotional funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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anathema_thorn's review

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adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

A really quick read that I'd advocate for being a beach read, ideally read at the end of summer when you're just trying to get into autumn. The plot and ending are very typical for a zombie story, but I'm biased since I typically don't like zombie stories. 

However, this is a really queer book, and it was nice to have such an unapologetically queer zombie story. I loved the bisexual representation and how fat femmes were very much the center of desire. The commentary on rainbow capitalism was very poignant. All in all, this novel has its good points but the plot itself is formulaic with a predictable ending, hence the mid rating.

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tommelisesofia's review

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adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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