Zombie Provides a Great Twist on the Genre

Jeremy Barker lives by a personal zombie survival code.

#1 Avoid eye contact

#2 Keep quiet

#3 Forget the past

#4 Lock-and-load

#5 Fight to survive

An aficionado of zombie films, Jeremy understands the nuances of survival. The code guides him through the halls of his all boy private, Catholic high school. He relies on it to help him navigate life with his angry father, his absent mother, and his long-gone brother. It helps Jeremy with love, and in a shocking turn of events, it will help him with quite a bit more.

Part Lord of the Flies, part Catcher in the Rye and part Prayer for Owen Meany, this extraordinarily well-written coming-of-age story is pitch perfect, and will be particularly appealing to male teens. Fast paced and punctuated with the daily, casual brutality of boy-on-boy violence, Jeremy’s resourcefulness and intelligence glow on the page, even as he gets sucked deeper and deeper into a chilling and increasingly horrifying mystery.

I couldn’t put it down.

And when I finished it I was stunned.

This brilliant first novel by J.R. Angelella is a must read.

I give this novel (pub. Date June 2012) 5 stars. My food review is crispy ribs, with the BBQ sauce crystalized the bittersweet on the outside. As you tear in the next level is succulent, juicy, steaming meat. As your hands drip with sauce and juice you suddenly realize you are sucking on a bone, feeling like a true carnivore. It is rather a shocking end to a very confusing experience. But oh, so delicious.

J.R. Angelella  - website

The Dead by Charlie Higson

This book takes place in London, and pretty much everyone 16 or older gets sick. They get a cough, a runny nose, and boils. Light bothers them and the voices in their head tell them to eat the kids. They turn into zombies (although the characters in the book make a point of calling them "sickos" because zombies are undead and the sick people aren't). The kids are left to fend for themselves in a world with no adults. Food is hard to come by, and whenever anyone goes out, they are attacked by the zombies. The book follows one group of kids, and every once in a while, the author kills one of them.

It wasn't a very good book. It was a bit too bizarre. There was one kid, Matt, who was convinced that he had seen "the Lamb of God," and whenever something happened, it was meant to be. He was really annoying. It wasn't very well written. The book never seemed to go anywhere, and nothing really developed. A new kid would come, and a different kid would die, so none of the characters had time to develop. It didn't pull me in, and I did not find it particularly enjoyable. And it had a bad ending.

It gets a 2.