Author: Diana Rowland
Genre: Urban fantasy w/ zombies
Published: July 2012
Publisher: DAW Books
Pages: Paperback, 312
ISBN: 978-0-7564-0750-6
Opening Lines: "'So you hiding a body in there or sumthin'?'"
Author Links: Website ♠ Twitter ♠ Facebook
Rating:
"Angel Crawford is finally starting to get used to life as a brain-eating zombie, but her problems are far from over. Her feonly record is coming back to haunt her, more zombie hunters are popping up, and she's beginning to wonder if her hunky cop-boyfriend is involved with the zombie mafia. Yeah, that's right—the zombie mafia.
"Throw in a secret lab and a lot of conspiracy, and Angel's going to need all of her brainpower
—and maybe a brain smoothie as well—in order to get through it without falling apart."
~ Jacket copy
Thoughts: I loved the first book, My Life As a White Trash Zombie! I thought it was different, unique, and innovative. Angel was an awesome snarky character who didn't come from the best life. I felt that she was a lot more accessible because of that. With that in mind, I have been waiting—rather impatiently, I might add—for this book to finally hit the shelves. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the first book.
This book picks up shortly after the first one ends. Angel is still doing well in her job, finally has a nice stash of brains, and seems to be doing well for herself. Her relationship with her father is improving, and, for all intents and purposes, her life is on the straight and narrow. However, things start to change after she picks up a body from NuQuesCor, a pseudo secret lab that nobody really knew about, and is held up in the morgue at gunpoint. And, being Angel, she cannot let it go, especially when her criminal background is being blamed for the robbery.
This book was kind of a listless read for me. I started it with high hopes; after the first few pages, it kind of fizzled out. The writing style was choppy; the dialogue was too forced and campy; instead of Angel's biting wit and sense of humor, I found to be, like the dialogue, too forced and lame; and the list goes on. Rowland also had a lot of word repetition between sentences and paragraphs.
Near the end of the book, I found that it did finally start to pick up and some of the dialogue became a little smoother. However, the issues from the beginning really impacted the rest of the book; it wasn't fully able to recover.
A few things did stand out, however. I liked Rowland's take on zombies and how/why brains keep them from rotting, give them superhuman abilities, and give them a longer life. Further, the creation process of a new zombie was rather interesting. The mothering aspect and the population control was not something I expected.
That being said, this book fell flat and didn't even rise to meet the mark set by the first book. I hope that the third will far surpass this one. I also hope that things are settled between Angel and Marcus, because I loved their interaction in the first.
Pages: 11.219
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