A review by lostgwennel
The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller

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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