Thursday, May 23, 2013

[Review] Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Alice in Zombieland
by Gena Showalter
White Rabbit Chronicles  #1
Young Adult Paranormal Horror.
Published: September 25th, 2012 by Harlequin Teen



Premise
She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.
Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.
Her father was right. The monsters are real….
To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.







Get your copy!





My thoughts
This is the first book by Gena Showalter that I've read AND my first zombie book ever. So, I have to say that even when she's a really well known author and zombie books are really popular, I'd never thought this one would be my cup of tea, but it was gifted to me by friend, so I decided to give it a try. 

Alice in Zombieland was a nice surprise for me. I loved the whole concept of ghost-zombies, teenage zombie killers and the soul matters, but that was not what I was expecting. I went to this book excepting some kind of retelling of Alice in Wonderland in an urban-fantasy way... It wasn't. It had some elements like the main character's name and the white rabbit thing, only in this story it takes the form of a cloud, but other than that, I think this could be considered almost as a new-from-scratch book. So, don't let the title and cover fool you... this is not what you would call a retelling of the original story.

All the retelling thing set aside, I really enjoyed this book. When I stop trying to compare it to Lewis Carroll story, I started to have a lot fun while reading it. 

After a horrible car accident that took the lives of her parents and little sister, Alice has to go live with her grandparents, which means, new town and new school... She's so not in the mood for all that, especially since she can't stop remembering the day of the accident... She could have sworn that she saw 'something' hovering over her dead father... Maybe he wasn't crazy, maybe if she would've listened to him, her family would be well and alive now. Her father was insane or so she thought, because he wouldn't stop talking about monsters that come out at night to eat human flesh. She should still find this complete non-sense, except she's sure that one of those things is out there in her grandparents' backyard, watching her. And then she meets Cole, a guy at school who everyone thinks is bad news, but he has a weird effect on her, every time she sees him, she has some sort of vision and it's driving her insane. Also he's hot as hell and won't stop looking at her. From this point on, everything is action-packed and full of huge revelations; you'll have to read the book to know what I mean.

What I really like about this book was the writing. I absolutely adore the witty dialogue and how the characters seemed to have their own voices. I loved Kat, Alice's friend and Alice's grandparents; they were so much fun to read about! 
Also, I really like the concepts in this book, I mean, the zombies are different from other books, they actually are smart and more like ghostly-like. I loved the whole idea of leaving your body to fight the zombies... I thought everything was really well thought and I'm thankful for that.

The things I didn't like that much were two: First, the romance... I thought it was a little cliché and even when I loved our kick-butt protagonist Alice, and our hottie Cole -the love interest- I didn't like them as a couple. And second... I didn't like the ending, I felt like there were a lot of thing that needed to be explained and they weren't... I know there is another book coming, but I would have liked a little more of closure for this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and found it hilarious and entertaining. I'll be getting a copy of Through the Zombie Glass when it comes out, no doubt.


Rating



About the author


Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty books in paranormal and contemporary romances, as well as young adult novels. Her series include White Rabbit Chronicles, Angels of the Dark, Otherworld Assassins, Lords of the Underworld, Alien Huntress and Intertwined.

Her novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Seventeen Magazine, and have been translated all over the world. The critics have called her books "sizzling page-turners" and "utterly spellbinding stories", while Showalter herself has been called “a star on the rise”.


And here are a few places you can hang out with her!


No comments:

Post a Comment