Details:
Series: Zombie
Pages: 353
Edition: Kindle
Publisher/Date: St. Martin’s Griffin / January 18, 2011
Price: $9.99 on Amazon
★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Allison Hewitt is a simple 20-something bookstore employee when They come. The Infected. The zombies. Holed up in the break room with her coworkers, a couple surviving customers, and her laptop as the only communication to the outside world, Allison decides to blog.
The book is written in a blog-style format with Allison recounting her adventures occurring between posts. Many of the entries are only a few days apart, but they’re extremely detailed, lengthy, and it read more like a novel. You’d think that would be a good thing, but I just felt something was wrong.
For starters:
WTF? This chick is running from dead things that want to eat her flesh and she has time to write pages and pages (articulately) about her experiences? Really? I don’t have the mental capacity to string together more than a few paragraphs after working all day (at a desk) and straining myself to reheat last night’s leftovers.
The biggest problem for me, however, was the fact that, for what was supposed to be a personal blog, it lacked personality. Allison told us what happened, but I never felt like I was seeing things through her eyes or understanding her emotions. She remembered entire conversations she’d had with other characters (did she have a recorder?), yet they were so generic they could’ve been written from an outsider’s perspective.
The replies from other survivors weren’t profound. Basically, they confirmed what we already knew: there are zombies. Got it.
If I take off my blogger glasses and judge this book as a novel, my opinion becomes a little brighter. I mean, not like sun bright, but maybe like medium-grade flashlight bright.
Some positives:
There were enough suspenseful moments where I was anxious to see what would happen next.
Allison – from what I could tell – wasn’t totally unlikable. Maybe that’s because she had a soft spot for Scooter, the German Shepard she rescued.
You didn’t always see the antagonists coming. Zombies weren’t the only bad guys Allison had to watch out for. I know, it’s near cliché for the whole “people-go-batshit-crazy-
I think part of the issue I had with this book was the fact that I just finished Mira Grant's Newsflesh Trilogy. Grant's series is also written in the blog-slash-novel style, but has more depth and crazy mind-screwing conspiracies. It went beyond the "just another zombie novel" category and left some pretty big footsteps to fill.
Overall, Allison Hewitt wasn’t particularly bad, but it wasn’t great either. It’s enjoyable enough if you’re a fan of zombie novels and looking for a casual read, but it’s not something you’re going to remember a few days down the road. I especially didn’t feel it was worth the $9.99 price tag for the Kindle edition when bargain-bin paperback versions are available for a few dollars.
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