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alexbrendeke's review against another edition
1.0
DNFed at 62% it just didn't intrigue me anymore. Even though there is action it is just repeating the same thing
xavia's review against another edition
3.0
I've had this book on my to read list for over a year, just waiting for the perfect moment to bust it out. Since I'm currently reading Halloween books, I thought this was perfect! Let's crack this beautiful baby open!
The cover? Perfection. The premise? Hilarious. The execution? Left a lot to be desired.
Let's hit it from the top. I love this cover. The combination of hot pink and electric blue is eyes catching, the title is fantastic, and I love that when I started reading I could pick out who was who. I also loved the irony that these zombie enthusiasts were going to Zombiecon, and that it was about to be over run by zombies. That sounds like a great mixture of spooky and fun, and I was expected the kind of grim comedy you might get from the Santa Clarita Diet, or the campy silly fun you get from the original resident evil games (don't @ me, I've played them, they are silly just as much as spooky).
Instead, this book tends to really plod along. There are no zombies in this book until you hit page 158. Until that point, you're really just riding along in June's head while she goes on and on about how wonderful Siggy and Imani are, and how mad she is at Blaire, and how dreamy the cast of Human Wasteland is. Things you could easily have squeezed into only a few pages or spread out over the length of the book. We spend almost all of these pages just walking around, looking at stuff, and going on and on about how much she loves Imani.
Am I saying that too much? That she loves Imani? Because she seriously goes on about it every few pages. She smells like apples. She has a perfect sense of direction. She's beautiful and amazing and smart and just gets her on a cellular level and June couldn't possibly live without her. I don't bring this up because I didn't like the idea of her being into her best friend, but because she is so clearly deeply in love with Imani, but her "romance" is with Hunter Sterling, who doesn't even show up until page 280, where they proceed to speed run love so that they can kiss at the end of the book.
That being said, there were things I did really enjoy about this book. One of them being that you got hints in those way overdrawn 150 pages that not all is right at Zombiecon. You see Hazmat teams wandering around taking people's temperatures, you see people messing with external doors, you see people attacking other people. That I did find interesting, I like seeing how something like this COULD happen instead of just plopping down in the middle. But I think you could have gotten the point across much sooner. 75 pages tops.
I also did really love the relationship between the girls. You can see they all have a deep and meaningful friendship, even with Blaire, who June tells us she currently hates, but still loves. My only problem with the way this was presented is that you cannot tell me June is not in love with Imani. She goes on about Imani in much the same way she does Hunter. And we see her interreacting with her way more and way more meaningfully then we ever see her with Hunter. And the book takes so long to develop that relationship that when it said "no, actually she loves this dude" it gave me whiplash. June and Imani should have been end game.
The zombie deaths were also quite fun. I don't like horror by any means, but I have played almost every resident evil game, and I've read the resident evil novels, and the zombie survival guide, and played zombie based board games and table top rpgs. They are about the only horror related thing I can really tolerate. So seeing them here, in book with people who are VERY MUCH unqualified to deal with this problem, is a lot of fun. June reacts the way that I think I would. I've never been in combat, and I've never faced a disaster before, but I've played a good bit of video games and I think grabbing that spare backpack and stocking it full of water bottles and granola bars is a great idea! Will electrocuting them work? Who knows! Let's see. Maybe if I hit it hard enough with a lamp I can get away? Have at it!
The fact that June reacts the same way I think I would, very conscious that I have no idea what I'm doing but this is what they do on TV, made it easy to sympathize with June. It was great. And I love that she survived! I'd probably have died super early, so it's gratifying to see a normal girl get it.
All in all, there were a lot of things I loved about this book, and some things that just didn't. But I still enjoyed it. I just wish it had moved faster and had made a couple different choices.
The cover? Perfection. The premise? Hilarious. The execution? Left a lot to be desired.
Let's hit it from the top. I love this cover. The combination of hot pink and electric blue is eyes catching, the title is fantastic, and I love that when I started reading I could pick out who was who. I also loved the irony that these zombie enthusiasts were going to Zombiecon, and that it was about to be over run by zombies. That sounds like a great mixture of spooky and fun, and I was expected the kind of grim comedy you might get from the Santa Clarita Diet, or the campy silly fun you get from the original resident evil games (don't @ me, I've played them, they are silly just as much as spooky).
Instead, this book tends to really plod along. There are no zombies in this book until you hit page 158. Until that point, you're really just riding along in June's head while she goes on and on about how wonderful Siggy and Imani are, and how mad she is at Blaire, and how dreamy the cast of Human Wasteland is. Things you could easily have squeezed into only a few pages or spread out over the length of the book. We spend almost all of these pages just walking around, looking at stuff, and going on and on about how much she loves Imani.
Am I saying that too much? That she loves Imani? Because she seriously goes on about it every few pages. She smells like apples. She has a perfect sense of direction. She's beautiful and amazing and smart and just gets her on a cellular level and June couldn't possibly live without her. I don't bring this up because I didn't like the idea of her being into her best friend, but because she is so clearly deeply in love with Imani, but her "romance" is with Hunter Sterling, who doesn't even show up until page 280, where they proceed to speed run love so that they can kiss at the end of the book.
That being said, there were things I did really enjoy about this book. One of them being that you got hints in those way overdrawn 150 pages that not all is right at Zombiecon. You see Hazmat teams wandering around taking people's temperatures, you see people messing with external doors, you see people attacking other people. That I did find interesting, I like seeing how something like this COULD happen instead of just plopping down in the middle. But I think you could have gotten the point across much sooner. 75 pages tops.
I also did really love the relationship between the girls. You can see they all have a deep and meaningful friendship, even with Blaire, who June tells us she currently hates, but still loves. My only problem with the way this was presented is that you cannot tell me June is not in love with Imani. She goes on about Imani in much the same way she does Hunter. And we see her interreacting with her way more and way more meaningfully then we ever see her with Hunter. And the book takes so long to develop that relationship that when it said "no, actually she loves this dude" it gave me whiplash. June and Imani should have been end game.
The zombie deaths were also quite fun. I don't like horror by any means, but I have played almost every resident evil game, and I've read the resident evil novels, and the zombie survival guide, and played zombie based board games and table top rpgs. They are about the only horror related thing I can really tolerate. So seeing them here, in book with people who are VERY MUCH unqualified to deal with this problem, is a lot of fun. June reacts the way that I think I would. I've never been in combat, and I've never faced a disaster before, but I've played a good bit of video games and I think grabbing that spare backpack and stocking it full of water bottles and granola bars is a great idea! Will electrocuting them work? Who knows! Let's see. Maybe if I hit it hard enough with a lamp I can get away? Have at it!
The fact that June reacts the same way I think I would, very conscious that I have no idea what I'm doing but this is what they do on TV, made it easy to sympathize with June. It was great. And I love that she survived! I'd probably have died super early, so it's gratifying to see a normal girl get it.
All in all, there were a lot of things I loved about this book, and some things that just didn't. But I still enjoyed it. I just wish it had moved faster and had made a couple different choices.
zbrarian's review against another edition
5.0
I am a huge zombie fan, The walking dead, Zombieland, you name it. This book hit everything: the bond of friendship, girl power, survival. I loved the Easter eggs and implied comments about The Walking Dead and George Romero‘s night of the living dead. This book knocked the socks off of me. June was a serious kick ass survivor.I love the start of the blossoming romance between June and Hunter, the star of the show wastelands, which was a metaphor for The Walking Dead. There were tears and there were lots of laughs. It did come down to survival of the fittest and June’s group was the fittest of them all.
cauldronblade209's review against another edition
4.0
The Advanced Uncorrected Galley verison I received from BookCon 2020.
I finally got a chance to read, and it was really good. I enjoyed the girl power, the character arcs and the adventure of ZombieCon.
I finally got a chance to read, and it was really good. I enjoyed the girl power, the character arcs and the adventure of ZombieCon.
madiemayhem's review against another edition
5.0
Teenage Madie would have DIED FOR THIS
and honestly as an adult I still loved it simply because it made me feel like my younger zombie obsessed self.
and honestly as an adult I still loved it simply because it made me feel like my younger zombie obsessed self.
fanniberger's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the idea and all in all it was a lovely YA story, but I had some issues with the pacing, writing style and characters hihi
kylajfountain's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
all together, or none at all.
loved the idea, didn't like the execution.
loved the idea, didn't like the execution.
haileyannereads's review against another edition
3.0
This was a good story about strong women and friendship. I'm not much of a zombie fan, but I still enjoyed it.