Review: Donna of the Dead by Alison Kemper

Title: Donna of the Dead
Author: Alison Kemper
Publisher: Entangled
Pub. Date: March 4, 2014
Genre: Young Adult
Rec. Age Level: 14+

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Cruises are a routine event when your dad works on cruise ships for a living, but what should be a laid back trip takes a turn for the deadly when a mysterious illness finds its way on board. Donna is in the middle of the ocean with her dad and, much to Donna’s annoyance, his dad’s older girlfriend and her grandson, Donna’s classmate, Deke, when the first reports of a debilitating illness that leaves the infected looking suspiciously like zombies take over the news. Donna pays little attention to the reports, after all, she has her own problems, like why Deke is acting so weird, whether her best friend, who hasn’t been answering her calls, is mad at her, and figuring out if the odd voices she keeps hearing in her head mean she’s crazy. When the fast acting illness takes over the ship, turning everyone on board into zombies except Donna and her family, it’s the voices that keep her one step ahead of the zombies. Donna and Zeke make it off the ship, but are forced to leave her dad and his grandmother on board. The adults assure Donna and Zeke they have a plan to make it off the ship and send them inland to search for shelter and safety in the meantime. When they stumble across a ragtag group of classmates barricaded within their high school, including Donna’s longtime crush, Liam, Donna and Zeke join the group hoping that, together, they can survive long enough for Donna’s dad to come up with a safe, zombie-free hiding place. As the situation escalates, the teens struggle to put aside their differences and rivalries to outlast and outsmart the growing horde of zombies surround the school. Some will break under the pressure, losing their grip on reality, some will be rescued by a pepper spray wielding librarian, and some will experience the magic of a first kiss in the is thrilling and laugh-out-loud funny zombie-filled coming of age story from Alison Kemper.

I have a weakness for apocalyptic zombie stories, so of course I had to read Alison Kemper’s Donna of the Dead. While this story wasn’t particularly unique and surprising, I still enjoyed it and had a hard time putting it down. The great thing about this particular premise is that it doesn’t have to be entirely original, the predictability is half of the fun!

My opinion on Donna wavered throughout the book. Sometimes she her selfishness and tendency towards self-preservation was infuriating, but she finally pulled it together in the latter half of the novel. Deke, on the other hand, I loved from the start. I liked that Kemper allowed a guy who, in Donna’s eyes, is a nerdy video game player to become the hero. After all, he’s spent years virtually training for a zombie takedown. Gotta love an underdog!

I did feel like some of the details that played an important role within the novel weren’t fully explained or fleshed out. Some elements just felt rushed and haphazard.  I think those issues could be remedied with a second book about Donna or, if not about Donna, at least set in the same world. Still, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from Kemper!

Review: Eat, Brains, Love by Jeff Hart

Two teenage zombies search for brains, love, and answers in this surprisingly romantic and laugh-out-loud funny debut novel with guts.

Jake Stephens was always an average, fly-under-the-radar guy. The kind of guy who would never catch the attention of an insanely popular girl like Amanda Blake-or a psychic teenage government agent like Cass. But one day during lunch, Jake's whole life changed. He and Amanda suddenly locked eyes across the cafeteria, and at the exact same instant, they turned into zombies and devoured half their senior class.

Now Jake definitely has Amanda's attention-as well as Cass's, since she's been sent on a top-secret mission to hunt them down. As Jake and Amanda deal with the existential guilt of eating their best friends, Cass struggles with a growing psychic dilemma of her own-one that will lead the three of them on an epic journey across the country and make them question what it means to truly be alive. Or undead.

Eat, Brains, Love is a heartwarming and bloody blend of romance, deadpan humor, and suspense that fans of Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies will devour. With its irresistibly dry and authentic teen voice, as well as a zombie apocalypse worthy of AMC's The Walking Dead, this irreverent paperback original will leave readers dying for the sequel that's coming in Summer 2014.

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To be honest, I expected Jeff Hart's Eat, Brains, Love to be a bit fluffy and definitely silly... Blame this assumption on the cover. Because, while there is a certain goriness to concept of the cover, it really didn't give me reason to assume that the book was really deal with the typical gory zombies. I will happily admit that I was completely wrong in my assumptions about Eat, Brains, Love: it's funny, it's romantic, and it's gory in the very best ways.

Eat, Brains, Love is told from two different perspectives: Jake, the recently undead, and Cass, the psychic government operative who hunts the undead. Jake's on the run with Amanda Blake, his super popular classmate, who just happened to turn zombie during the same lunch period as he did. After eating half of their friends and peers in a zombie haze, Amanda and Jake revert back to the normal, clear-headed selves with no other option but to flee. Enter Cass, who works for a secret government team that cleans up situation like the one just created by Jake and Amanda. The team tracks down and takes out the zombies, but not before altering the memories of the humans involved so they overlook that zombies exist at all. Cass has been doing this job for years and she's proud of it - she keeps people safe and gets rid of monsters - but, with Jake, Cass finds herself doubting everything she's always believed. Cass's psychic abilities allow her inside Jake's head and she's surprised by what she finds there. Sure, he's a zombie and he's killed a growing number of people, but he's also just a guy. A guy that Cass can't help but like and who, at least most of the time, doesn't seem like a zombie at all. While Cass struggles with her connection to Jake, he and Amanda are struggling with the unexpected turn their lives have taken, the guilt from having massacred their friends, and the hunger that sometimes fades, but always returns.

I'm pretty squeamish when it comes to gratuitous gore, but I really liked Hart's incorporation of blood and guts in Eat, Brains, Love. It was gross, but also funny, which I found smart and, oddly enough, charming. Remember that scene in Disney's Lady and the Tramp where the two lovebirds are sharing a plate of spaghetti, when they find they're both working their way up opposite ends of a spaghetti strand? Well, that happens in Eat, Brains, Love... with intestines. And I thought it was hilarious! That's the kind of gore you'll find in this book. It's a zombie book, so it's totally appropriate, and it's not over the top.

I loved that Cass and Jake were the two telling the story rather than Amanda... or maybe I'm just biased because, in the context of the strange love triangle that was developing, I favor Cass. Like me, you might wonder how Hart will pull off a zombie-hunter falling in love with a zombie, but Hart's zombies are unique in that, until they're hungry, they're pretty much normal kids. Kids that heal ridiculously fast and often have leftover blood and gore staining their clothes from the last meal, but kids nonetheless.

Eat, Brains, Love is nonstop action and, while the ending does offer some resolution, it also left me wanting more and very thankful that there is already a sequel in the works. I wholeheartedly agree with the assertion that fans of Warm Bodies will love Eat, Brains, Love, but I also think that this book has the potential to win over readers who aren't as zombie-friendly with it's wit and charm.

HarperTeen, October 2013, Paperback, ISBN: 9780062200341, 352 pgs.