A review by eesh25
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

4.0

I had two reasons to be very excited about reading this book. One, it's narrated by a zombie (so cool!), and two, it's a romance. How often do you get to read about a world infested with zombies but have the main focus be the romance? Between a human and a zombie, no less? And it's so short that you can read it in a day, easy.

The zombie protagonist is R (that's all he remembers of his name) is living his normal Dead life, eating people, roaming around pointlessly, and grunting and groaning. Then one day, on another of his food rounds, he saves a living girl. That's the beginning of the romance, which is awesome because it's a meet-cute that's basically person A deciding not to eat person B.

But I was in love before that even happened. The book takes you in immediately with the narrative, which is so fucking cool and different. I mean, it's a guy who doesn't remember his past life, speaks very little, has little emotional range, and eats people for a living. And he's so casual about it all. I guess anybody would be if they were a zombie but that's the point; Isaac Marion nails the zombie voice and I was extremely happy with that.

Then there's the fact that R is very likable. Eating people aside, he's a good, Dead guy, and more romantic that most, if not all, living guys I know (living guys are lame).

The romance between Julie and R is gradual. But it's also adorable. They connect on a deep level. They help each other out, get to know one another, share thoughts, stories, philosophies. And they fall in love. You wouldn't think such a thing would be believable, but it is.

The situation with the humans and other zombies and the zombie apocalypse is... complicated. The world is ending and no one know where the virus, or whatever it is, even came from, much less how to cure it. They've got no clue how to fix shit so they're just killing each other. Meanwhile, R is trying to figure out a lot of stuff out.

The ending is kinda corny. You know, the revelations of why and how and what to do. But it's not corny in a bad way and it makes a surprising amount of sense. I liked it.

Overall, this book was just as good as I hoped it would be. It's funny, sweet, fast paced, engaging and just very enjoyable, but also has a lot of depth. It's not gruesome or gritty, because R doesn't see things in that way, so if you're looking for that, there are other options. It's a zombie romance and it's beautiful. Also (almost forgot), it gave me another quote to add to my list of favourites:

"I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses."