At the heart of it, aren't most zombie books/movies the same? The crisis starts and the challenge becomes dodging flesh eaters while reuniting and rediscovering humanity. One of the things I love about the apocalypse is that everyone is prey. Division of sexes, ages, races, sexualities all become so arbitrary when it's human versus undead. What do people do then? Further divide or overcome difference?

This book? Cherry Twizzlers all the way, baby. You know, you eat one and it's cherry goodness, so maybe you have another because you're hungry and are working a 12 hour shift. Kind of satisfying to chomp on. And before you know it, you've eaten half a bag of licorice and suddenly feel vaguely ill, still hungry and wondering why on earth you ate all that licorice?

For a nice overview, check Andrea's review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/322571578 She's right, characterization is rather awful. There's numerous logical problems and there's a large helping of zombie tropes. Word choice was simple and at the proverbial sixth-grade level of adult eduction material. There was a terribly awkward four-way love/sex interest. And yet.

And yet I still couldn't put it down, except when I had to take a break because I was getting too apprehensive about the hordes of zombies chasing our heroines.

I guess if you include zombies, a married lesbian and a German shepherd puppy, I can forgive a lot. ( )

Sometimes there are books that clearly written by amateur and it shows in every way. The amateur side is so strong that there is no point in bashing book on that ground. BUT. Most amateur books also usually written either exceptionally badly or with so much heart that amateurish attitude becomes their greatest plus. And this book has that heart. ( )

Book 3 of my Zombie-a-thon 2022!

This started off excellently with a stressful and heartbreaking scene. Things steadily declined from there with some personality shifts that were ridiculous and annoying. I need character development in a story and enjoy the building up of relationships, however, this all moved at a laughably unrealistic pace. I know it's a zombie apocalypse story but I still want some elements to be believable. The zombie attack scenes were well written and intense. Overall though, I did not enjoy the characters in the story and the heavy focus on finding love again a matter of days after characters lost their kids and spouses to the zombie virus. Others have enjoyed this so another case of 'not for me'. More flesh eating and less swooning please. ( )

I liked how this book focused on what they went through to survive from these creatures. I didn't like the touchy feelyness throughout this book. It didn't seem realistic to me. ( )

The First Days by Rhiannon Frater is the first book in her zombie trilogy, As the World Dies. It’s been awhile since I have read a “zombie book” and I have to say that I quite enjoyed this one. I find these kind of fantasy/thrillers very good escape reading. While Frater really didn’t bring anything new to the genre, she provided an exciting, page turning story and a group of characters to root for. Two women are front and centre in this story, Katie and Jenni, and it was fun to see how they grew from terrified victims to kick-ass, gun toting, zombie bashing heroines.

The story follows Katie and Jenni as they escape from a heavily populated city and find sanctuary in a small, roughly fortified Texas town. With the men outnumbering the women, and many of the man being young and single, it isn’t long before romance breaks out. Things don’t always run smoothly however, as both Katie and Jenni are recovering from the zombie death of their spouses. While the book doesn’t end on a cliff-hanger, there are enough unsolved issues that have me looking forward to the next book.

While The First Days deals with zombies in a very familiar way, and there isn’t a lot of emotional depth to explore, I still found the story compelling enough to clear my mind of the real life difficulties we are currently facing. ( )