A review by asimilarkite
Dead City by James Ponti

4.0

REVIEW written for WASHYARG (Washington Young Adult Review Group):

Beginning cut not for spoilers, just because it's a plot summary and you can skip it if you just want to hear what I thought of the book :)

Spoiler

Precocious middle-schooler Molly Bigelow is kind of an odd kid. She goes to a special math and science school called MIST (Metropolitan Institute of Science and Technology), spends her free time hanging out in the morgue her late-mother worked in, and still has time for friends and family. As if her life isn’t odd enough, suddenly, upper classmen Natalie, Alex, and Grayson have suddenly taken an interest in her. At first, Molly is super excited that she gets the opportunity to hang out with high schoolers – but then she finds out they don’t just want to be friends. They want her to join their OMEGA team, and join in the fight in policing and protect Manhattan’s undead population.

Ponti’s fiery heroine is sassy and sarcastic, and upper-elementary and middle school readers will instantly find themselves sucked into the slightly scary (but not too much) alternate Manhattan created by the author. In many ways this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or rather…Molly the Zombie Slayer?) for tweens, and readers will itching to get their hands on the next in the series (entitled Blue Moon), arriving on shelves in October 2013!