Unfinished Reading: Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Title: Alice in Zombieland
Author: Gena Showalter
Age Group: Teens
# of Pages: 416
My Rating: 1/5

Alice survived a tragic car accident, but her family did not. Up until then, she always thought her father's paranoia about monsters was rubbish. Except after the accident, she thinks he may have been right after all and they are the ones responsible for her family's death. 

In attempt to diminish my unread YA collection, I picked up Alice in Zombieland from the pile. I recognized the author and have heard much hype around her previous series, Intertwined (which I also have, unread). I thought I'd give Alice in Zombieland a shot because I love a good zombie novel (they are harder to pull off in book form in my opinion). 

As you can tell from the post title, I did not finish the book, I have about 100 pages left but I don't think I will be picking it back up. I thought that I should give my opinion on what I have read so far regardless and give this blog a little boost after much neglect. 

Alice's character is tolerable. She's more or less an average girl (aren't they all?) in a less-than-happy state after the death of her family. She then met bad boy Cole. Cole's character bothered me because while I was reading, all I could think of is Katy Perry's song Hot N Cold. One minute, he's there and helping her out. Next minute, he pretty much tells her to stay away from him. His Edward Cullen's hot-and-cold persona was not winning him any points with me. 

What bothered me the most about the plot is the fact that the "zombies" aren't really zombies. When you think zombies, you think infected people that feeds off of humans. Not these ones though. They are apparently invisible and only certain people can see them. In order to fight them, your essence or soul or whatever has to be separated from your body because the "zombies" were spirits and their physical forms do not exist. Anyway, the whole premise of this alone flabbergasted me. This would have been better off if it was a whole new supernatural species the author created. Not to mention, the novel is not based off of Alice in Wonderland at all. There are just very few references to it. 

I didn't like the writing style either because of the lack of detail. I feel that in order for me to enjoy a novel now is for the author to have a writing style that creates an atmosphere and immerse you into the world (similar to J.K. Rowling). It's unfortunate but a lot of the novels nowadays have that straight forward action and sentence structure. No details, nothing to give you a proper feel of the world in the book. This is pretty much why I have a hard time getting back into reading YA novels. After reading hundreds and hundreds of books, I've seen a lot of books go through the same cliches with plot, characters, writing style, etc. Which is why now I am very selective when it comes to reading nowadays. 

So I would skip this novel if you are looking for a traditional zombie novel. Maybe try it out if you are a fan of Gena Showlater. If you just want to pick up any YA novel, I would say to avoid this one. 

Review copy from Harlequin Teen.