My Life As a White Trash Zombie (White Trash Zombie #1) by Diana Rowland[/caption]My Life as a White Trash Zombie # 1 by Diana Rowland
★★★★★★★★☆☆
I went into this book without expectations. I’m not a zombie genre connoisseur. Not movies. Not books. The idea of mindless dead bodies jerking around until they’re picked off like target practice just seems more brawn than brains (no pun intended) and that doesn’t appeal to me. I can’t even remember what made me choose this book other than I was looking for a light read over Memorial Day Weekend and thought it sounded different.
And unlike spending an entire day out in the sun without sunscreen, this was a great decision!
Twenty-one year old Angel, wears her name with irony. She pops pills, dropped out of school at 16, had run-ins with the law and has an on-again-off-again relationship with her trailer trash boyfriend. Not that her home life is any better. She lives in a dump with her abusive, alcoholic father who blames her for the death of her mentally ill mother.
The story begins when Angel opens her eyes to discover she’s in the hospital for an apparent overdose – except she doesn’t remember taking an <I>abnormal</I> amount of pills and is having flashbacks of a fatal car accident that there’s no possible way she could’ve been in without injury. To add to the confusion, she receives a mysterious care package including some “energy” drinks and a note telling her she is to report to the coroner for a job that is waiting for her.
Looking at the title of this book, you can see where this is going. And, if the story stopped there, it would’ve sucked – but the “transformations” go far beyond dead vs. undead. For a shorter book, it executed an astonishing amount of character development. It played on “white trash” stereotypes, but without exploit. The fast-paced plot used predictability to lull the reader into a false sense of familiarity before taking a detour into the unexpected.
I have to say, I was a little disappointed in the ending – because I realized the next book hadn’t come out yet. Ahh! Impatient!
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