Alice in Zombieland

This was an interesting re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland. In Alice in Zombieland, Alice Bell's life has always been curtailed by her father's insistence that monsters exist. The family cannot leave the house after dark, she's been taught how to fight hand-to-hand and with a couple of weapons, and they never - NEVER - drive past the graveyard. All of this changes in one night - when Alice “falls down the rabbit hole” as it were - and discovers her father wasn't insane after all.

Now, living with her grandparents, haunted by visions of her little sister and glimpses of monsters in the dark, Alice - or Ali, as she insists on being called - finds herself being called on to fight the monsters alongside the roughest crowd in her high school. Falling in love with the leader of the bad boys doesn't help her social life, but might help her stay alive.

I enjoyed this book and will probably pick up the sequel, Through the Zombie Glass, if I can find it at the library. The writing flowed well most of the time, and while Alice began a little whiny, by the end of the book she was pretty bad ass. It felt.... a little more “young adult” than some young adult books I've read; the emotions seemed detached or damped down a bit. While she was dealing with grief over the loss of her family, and possible death at the hands of zombies, it just didn't feel as raw as I think those emotions should have felt. And the notion of a bunch of high school kids fighting zombies - with the support of adults, including the high school principal - was a little weird. Still an interesting book, and not a waste of time, but it felt a lot like “teenagers are special snowflakes!”

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

“I was having dinner with Zombie Carl the other night. You know, steak, rare, and a bottle of vintage type A. He told me all his secrets, but too bad for you I promised him I wouldn't tell. In exchange I asked him to gather his best undead buddies and stalk me through my friend's yard.”

I have heard a lot of people talk about this trilogy both good and bad things. I got all three books for Christmas, so i plan on reading them as soon as possible. They all have gorgeous covers and this one has a green theme under the dust jacket.

This book is not a fairy-tale retelling, and it has very little to do with Alice in Wonderland (save the title and Ali's name). I think it is important that people realize this before reading the book and being disappointed. This was an easy enjoyable read that when I had time to read, I flew through. The cast of characters in this book is great. Between Cole and Justin, Kat and Frosty, Nana and Pops, and the rest of the zombie slayer gang, there are so many different personalities that we get to experience.

This book answered a lot of questions about the zombies and slayers but also raised a lot of questions about the hazmats are up to and what Ali is actually capable of. I'm looking forward to seeing where Gena Showalter goes with the rest of this trilogy.

As for the zombies, I really liked Gena's spin on them and how they worked. These were more ghost like than your typical zombie and that made for some interesting choices in terms of how one defeats them. The romance in this book was also well done. It was a good progression and it is clear there are going to be problems in Cole and Ali's future.

“Can you tell I was a depressed, neurotic mess?”

In a nutshell, Alice in Zombieland is a glorified high school love story. And a rather annoying and cringe-worthy one at that.

When you read the synopsis and look at the cover of the book, it sounds like a darker, zombiefied version of Alice in Wonderland. I for one am a fan of retellings, and so when I heard about this, I figured it was right up my alley.

I was wrong.

Instead, I got love story with few similarities to Alice in Wonderland. In a retelling, it is critical to have the perfect amount of similarities. Alice in Zombieland lacks similarities to Alice in Wonderland, and I didn't feel that it was a retelling in any way to the latter.

Once I realized it wasn't quite what I was expecting, I tried to change my mindset to fit with the story. I still didn't like it, unfortunately.

For starters, the love is such a bad case of insta-love it's not even funny. And it grossed me out, to be honest. For example, our lovely main character Ali first sets eyes on the love interest, Cole Holland, on page 55. By page 90, Kat, Ali's friend, is already speaking of how Cole practically ‘ate her up' with her eyes. And yes, I know, we find out later in the book that Cole and Ali have some freaky premonition stuff going on when they look at one another, but still. It was too much, too fast.

As for the characters, I didn't particularly love any of them. Were they awful? No. Were they fantastic? No. The main character was kind of annoying, but I didn't hate her. Her love? Yes, I did hate that, but I've already talked about that.

The zombies were very disappointing. I mean, zombie ghosts? No. I want brain-sucking, gory zombies. Walking Dead zombies. So yes, I was a bit mad about that.

There are other things that bothered me, but I think I've butchered this poor book enough. Although I wasn't a fan of 99% of the book, the writing was very good. Gena Showalter is a good writer, if nothing else.

All in all, this book was a big disappointment for me. It had very high ratings and an intriguing synopsis, but it lacked in too many departments.

“Because of him, I'd learned to survive this new world. More than that, I'd learned how to overcome it.”