Book Review ---> I Kissed A Zombie And I Liked It by Adam Selzer

I Kissed A Zombie and I Liked It

By:  Adam Selzer
Published By: Delacorte Books
Published Date:  January 2010  Delacorte Books

Read Via Nook

Tags:  Zombies, Vampires, Young Adult, Paranormal Romance


First Line:  Watching a vampire make out with an idiot is kind of like going to the farmer's market and noticing just how many farmers have lost fingers in on-the job accidents.  Even though it's kind of disturbing, it's impossible to look away. 


Why the Mad Scientist Read this Book:  I admit that the Mad Scientist read this book because it looked like a fun fluffy read and I needed that type of book to fit my mood.

Concotion of a Review:

I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It is not a literary masterpiece or a Halloween masterpiece for that fact.  It is a fun, facetious take on the young adult genre.  Selzer takes teen trends, pop culture and the vampire craze that swept the nation as of late and twisted it together with irony and funny prose.  As a person who is intertwined with a different age, I do not see the cleverness behind the pop culture reference standing up to the test of time.

Algonquin, otherwise known as Alley or Ice Queen of the Vicious Circle, spends her days coming up with witty one liners and working on the high school newspaper (blog).  She is a very negative goose when it comes to courting and love.  The Ice Queen does not want to get emotionally tangled with anyone.  To temper the loneliness she uses and tosses poor boys aside.  *tsk tsk*  She also has the pessimistic side to life, everything will be better once I move out of this forsaken city.  *sigh*  These young wiper snappers do not realize that the grass is hardly greener elsewhere.

Her eyes open up and take a new brightness when she meets Doug, a goth who makes an appearance singing for the towns crappiest band, the Sorry Marios.  Ice Alley starts to melt along with her reputation, from the first note she hears come out of Doug's mouth.  Everything who she is becomes insignificant.  She soon becomes one of those doe eyed girls who changes their skeptical outlook a the sight of good man Zombie.  Now she needs to figure out about interspecies dating.  *Gasps*

There were a few parts where Alley was torn over the things she wanted in life and Doug.  I found it rather interesting to watch her make tough decision about her love life.  This book brought me back a few centuries to when I was young lady in waiting.  We did not have these types of problems to face but those are the days that shape us into the people we will become.

Ah, the ending.    *Holds hand to chest*  Ladies and Gentleman... the ending was a bit surprising.  Even though I was shocked,  Selzer did some great tinkering and wrapped up the story beautifully.  This book was a sweetly spun first love romance threaded with a number of paranormal allusions. 

3 Kisses  ---  While being mildly fun, this was a quick book to read on a different Zombie spin.  Can Zombies fall in love?  Now that is the Question!

Quotes:

 "If you really like someone, it doesn't matter what their mouth feels or tastes like.  The kiss is still awesome." 

"I didn't think it was possible, but the guy is both a wiener and a dick."

"You're just jealous, Alley," says Marie.  "Can you honestly tell me that if some guy rose from the grave and spent a hundred lonely years looking for just the right person, then fell for you, you wouldn't think that was totally romantic?"  "I'd think he was a stalker," I say.

*Morbid Romantica Challenge!*

Add Your Zombie Review or Other Morbid Romantica Challenges 

to the Link Up!

Book Review: Strange Angels (Strange Angels, #1)

Title: Strange Angels (Strange Angels, #1)
Author: Lili St. Crow (pseudonym for Lilith Saintcrow)
Publisher: Razorbill (a division of Penguin Group USA), 2009
Date read: November 26th, 2010
Page total: 293 pages
Genre(s): Urban Fantasy; Young Adult
First Line of the book: I didn’t tell Dad about Grandma’s white owl. I know I should have.

Dad? Zombie. Mom? Long gone. Me? Well, that’s the scary part.
The Real World is a frightening place. Just ask sixteen-year old orphan Dru Anderson, a tough girl who has taken down her fair share of bad guys. She’s armed, dangerous, and ready to kill first and ask questions later. So it’s gonna take her a while to figure out who she can trust…
[…]
Alone, terrified, and trapped, Dru’s going to need every inch of her wit and training to stay alive. The monsters have decided to hunt back - and this time, Dru’s on their menu. Chances of survival? Slim to none. If she can’t last until sunup, it’s game over…
(From the back of the book)





Do you have a paperback copy of Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead by some weird coincidence? There is a sneak peek of Strange Angles at the end of the book, unless you’ve got on old version of the book. That’s how I got to know this book - so this excerpt-from-another-book-at-the-end-of-a-famous-book-advertisement-strategy worked this time.
Back to the book. This book was… weird. Like, very strange. I know it’s not the best way to describe a book, not to mention the nicest, but I found it weirdly good in a weird-good way, mostly because I can’t decide whether I like this book or not.
The book is packed with action because Dru is a hunter who hunts all kind of creatures that are not supposed to exist, including werwulfen (=werewolves), upir (=suckers=vampires), zombies, poltergeist, ghost, well, you get the picture. (For some reasons, the author prefers other names for mythical creatures, probably to distinguish them from other urban fantasies.) As you can imagine, there are plenty of action scenes, most of them involving guns, body combat and some mean kicks. And although my head was reeling from all those action scenes, the actual plot was very slow. The whole book felt like a long, long prologue for the real story, as if the real plot would take off in the second book. It wasn’t exactly boring but if you take out the action scenes, all you have is Dru’s encounter with Graves and how his life gets complicated as he gets involved with Real World.
Another thing I’m not very happy with is that Dru doesn’t describe the Real World to the readers, it’s like as if she thinks we know about it already. It irritated me a lot, but real explanation comes later in the book with other crucial information, and it’s worth waiting.
All in all, it was a compelling, funny read, and I’ll most definitely read the second book, because the first one ends with a cliff hanger and most importantly, I’ve got the feeling, it’ll be much better than the first book.





Quotes:

"Most girls go through a gawky stage, but I’m beginning to think mine will be a lifelong thing. It doesn’t bother me too much. Better to be strong than pretty and useless. I’ll take a plain girl with her head screwed on right over a cheerleader any day."

"I've been bitten, beat up, tied to a bed, James Bonded out, and now you finish off by choking a goddamn teacher!"

"You're not dead. You're too goddamn annoying to be dead."

"I guess since the groin is the center of a guy's world, he rarely guesses it isn't the center of yours."

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (Second Review!)

So I just now noticed that Jen has already posted a review for this, but I finally got the review done! Enjoy!

-------------------------

The Forest of Hands and Teeth (TFOHAT, #1)
By Carrie Ryan
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2009
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Date Finished: 7/22/2010
Genres: Fantasy, Futuristic, Young Adult, Action

First Line of Book: "My mother used to tell me about the ocean."

Review: I had a hard time getting into this book in the beginning. One, because I was reading at least 2 other books, and two, because it took a while for the main character to get to an exciting point in her life. Anyway, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was an amazing book to read, filled with action, adventure, romance, and the infamous Unconsecrated -- what their world calls what are basically zombies. This is a book that I would definitely recommend, and will probably be rereading again by next summer.

Rating:

Quotes from the Book:

"For now, he is my brother and both our parents are gone and we are all we have left."

--Zakiya, the walking butterfly

Beautiful Dead: Jonas - Book Review

Beautiful Dead: Jonas

By: Eden Maguire
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Pages: 288
Rating: 5
Book Cover Rating: 5
Read: 7/3/2010
Genre: Urban Dark Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal Romance

The cover art for this book is what drew me in. It just has this look that had me loving it. I found and requested this book through the GoodReads swap. My skin was jumping off of me when Beautiful Dead finally hit my doorstep. I rushed through the book I was reading and then dove right into this book and finished the next day.

Beautiful Dead: Jonas is the first in a series. The story line is dark and left me oddly on edge. The premise is unique. At least I can say that I have never read anything this odd and uncanny book.

Darina, is our protagonist, who is a teen trying to deal with the death of four fellow students: Jonas, Arizona, Summer, and Phoenix. Alas, one of them was her boyfriend, Phoenix. She falls into depression and starts to see him in places that remind her of him. She soon finds out that her psychotic sightseeing is a bit more real then one would think.

The Beautiful Dead are selected people who have died and come back to figure out the events that unfold leading to their deaths so they can understand what had happened. The first book focuses on Jonas death, his time is running out. Jonas died in a motorcycle crash that also severely injured his girlfriend, Zoey. What really happened?

Darina finds herself no longer coping with death but tangled in a web of trying to spend time with half dead Phoenix, making it past all of the Beautiful Dead's powerful tricks to keep their kind a secret (showing their darker side), and the mystery she is determined to help solve surrounding Jonas's death. Surprisingly, Phoenix is a very caring and loving half dead. Who would of thought? The romance was cute. She struggled to fix her friendship with Zoey, who was indeed a very interesting character herself. Should Maguire toss in another obstacle for Darina? Logan was it. Her best friend, was now showing interest in her. He wanted more, a relationship that Darina could not even fathom now that she sort of had Pheonix back. Creepy.

Maguire spun a new twisted tale around a new idea of Zombies and created a book that I really enjoyed. The death and loss was sad and pulled on those heart strings but Darina's orginial personailty flows through the book to keep it light and flowing. This book has Paranormal Romance, Zombies with super powers, mystery, all wrapped up in a debut novel.


Rating:5

Quotes:

"You're crazier than a gut-shot possum. That's what my old man would say."

"I didn't wreck it," I protested, defying the Neanderthals on the porch to say one bad word about female drivers. "I just rearranged the front fender, that's all."

"What are you suddenly, some kind of ghost buster?"

"Can you imagine what it's like, this PTSD? It's like knitting when you drop a stitch and everything unravels. You end up with a stupid hole that just keeps on getting bigger."

"I sank to the floor and wept until I was exhausted. Then I thought it trough and tried to deal with the shock of realizing that I was one crazy girl driven out of her head by the loss of the person in the world who had meant everything to her."

The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Title: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Author: Carrie Ryan
Pages: 310
Genre: YA, Fiction, Zombies, Horror, Romance
Synopsis: In Mary's world there are simple truths.

The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her.

And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Publisher (Delacorte)

When I sat to read this in my closet about a month ago I decided that I am a complete and utter wimp. My epiphany occurred when I was sure my closet was infested with zombies. Yes, zombies. I’m sure you are probably saying to yourself pfff. Jen, zombies aren’t real.

They may not exist here, but they most definitely existed in the book I happened to be reading, a YA novel called The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (catchy title huh?). Well, the sunken faced, broken boned, moaning zombies made their way into my closet, jaws clacking and all (I have a very vivid imagination). I was so scared, that I had to stop reading and go to bed, cuddling up with Husband in an attempt to keep myself from turning back on the light.

I’m sure the book wasn’t really that scary, but for a wimp such as me, it was. Although, I am happy to say it hasn’t deterred me enough to not read the sequel. The main premise of the book is about a small village based in the confines of a fenced in area. All around the fenced in area is the Forest of Hands and Teeth, so named for the zombies that infect it, or as the people call them, the Unconsecrated. It’s a pretty spiritual society, apparently, ran by the Sisterhood (it’s nice it doesn’t always have to be a man :D).

Mary our main character lives within this little village and the people say that there are no other living people left. That the unconsecrated have taken them all, whether turning them into zombies or eating them…yummy! Of course, as we all know, this is never good enough for our main character. She must go traipsing along causing havoc for herself and other due to her curiosity. Would we expect anything else? No! *they chant*

Still… the book gave me what I wanted, somewhat anyway. There was conflict, love, girl fights, fires, love, dogs, oceanic talk, love (did I say love?).

The unique story line woven throughout of a suffering community and zombies hiding out piqued my interest and kept me reading. Due to my goal of avoiding all things horror, I never much venture into zombies and all things related. So in my world of paranormal, it was an excellent flip of scenery. I did love the characters of the book, but mostly the sub-characters. To me, Mary, was annoyingly selfish and whiny. I don't want to give away too much, but she had the most annoying obsession for a particular large mass of water. I couldn't quite figure it out. I wish Ryan would have delved into the underlying meaning of that fixation.

Overall though, it was a pretty good read and I plan on digging into the sequel The Dead Tossed Waves as soon as my copy is available at the library. I wonder what will be in store for the zombies/unconsecrated who terrorize the futuristic dystopian world.

3.5 out of 5 Kisses