Zombie-tastic Zombie

My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

* This great zombie cover was created by the very talented Dan Dos Santos.  I love this cover and it really makes the book stand out and goes along well with the story.

* Read via the public library.  This is one library book that I'll definitely be buying.

This book gets a zombietastic 5 out of 5 gnomes for having a great story where the zombie is a main character and not a villain.  This is a great take on the whole finding and bettering yourself kind of story.  It also was a great read with a character who is definitely flawed but really fun to read about.   

Angel Crawford is well, to put it nicely, a loser.  Things actually start to improve for her after she dies.  The story actually opens up with her waking up in the hospital after an overdose.  Things get weirder from there though because her memories don't match up with what she's told has happened.

She's not sure what to believe at first and thinks that she may be going crazy.  Her lifestyle before waking up in the hospital mostly consisted of doing drugs, drinking, and hanging out with her boyfriend.  The boyfriend isn't exactly the greatest influence either, he's kind of a slacker/enabler.  Angel is someone that you might not think has a chance seeing as she's the daughter of a crazy mother and an alcoholic father.  She's been making some bad choices since high school at least but her new state that she finds herself in means that alcohol and drugs don't have the same effect that they used to.

A mysterious note tells her to get a job at the morgue and do the job for at least a month or she'll go to jail.  To her own amazement she actually likes her new job.  The job at the morgue is gross yet intriguing because she gets to see death up close and personal.  This job also gives her access to a lot of brains, which is pretty darn important to her survival.

If you read the title of the book then you already know what Angel has been turned in to.  Knowing that just adds to the reading experience as you see her discovering what she now is and everything that entails.  She's a quick learner and her new strong stomach means that nothing seems to bother her during autopsies or while picking up a body.

Even the minor characters are portrayed well and will leave you wanting to know even more about their stories.  Everybody from her father to the cops she meets feels like they are important.  One of the most entertaining parts is getting to see how Angel changes through the various people she connects with at work and a potential love interest.

Now you may be thinking about the weirdness of zombie love and picturing something disgusting.  In this world though the act isn't really necrophilia like as long as the zombie has recently eaten brains.  If they haven't eaten recently though then zombie sex probably would be rather messy/horrifying.

This book has something for everyone.  The story is a mash of zombies, overcoming adversity, mysterious circumstances, and a serial killer.  The ending line will make you laugh out loud and does set up some interesting developments for the next book.  All of those things blended together make for one fresh zombie read.  It's even hard to figure out who the bad guy is, there are lots of clues along the way to what's going on but I know I sure didn't figure everything out.  Angel is one heck of a character and I can't wait to see what happens next.

My Favorite Quotes/Lines
"So maybe there were different degrees of monster.  I was a monster with a mushy heart."

"I smiled my best bad-bitch smile.  Oh, yeah.  I was about to burn me some brains."

"And nothing fell off that wasn't supposed to."

Sentence Sneak Peek - My Life as a White Trash Zombie

My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

The first sentence from each chapter of My Life as a White Trash Zombie, it's a mini summary of what you can expect to read.

* Spoilers are highlighted like so :)

This great zombie cover was created by the very talented Dan Dos Santos.  I love this cover and it really makes the book stand out and goes along well with the story.

"You should be dead," the ER nurse stated as she ad-justed something on my IV."

"I made it home from the hospital and obediently set my alarm for 7:30 A.M."

"Three hours ago I was in bed, I thought miserably."

"It was after five P.M. by the time I finally left the morgue and climbed into my Honda."

"Despite the failure of Xanax, I managed to get a good night's sleep, and actually got out of bed when my alarm went off."

"The ringing of my phone jerked me out of a nightmare—rotting flesh and crawling maggots, reaching hands and flesh dripping off bones."

"More than ready to get the hell out of there, I had the dead guy bagged, on the stretcher, and shoved into the back of the van in record time."

"My stress levels were so high that when my cell phone rang I let out a shriek and damned near threw the bag containing the tub of brains into the air."

"The Top Cow Café, situated in a slightly crummy section of Tucker Point, was a cramped little hole-in-the-wall with a sign out front so weatherworn it was barely read-able and waitresses who didn't waste their time with little things like courtesy and smiles."

"All next week I was the goddamn model of a good worker."

"Angel."

"I gazed morosely at the contents of the little fridge in my room."

"I practically sang for joy when I got the call at six A.M. to pick up a body."

"You're certainly raring to go, Angel."

"As annoyed as I was at Kang and his no-more-info-for-you bullshit, the entire incident had clued me in to sev-eral hugely important facts."

"The third morgue tech, Jerry, was sitting at the computer in the morgue when I came in the next morning."

"My decent mood lasted until I pulled up to the house and saw my dad sitting on the porch."

"As soon as the cops left with my dad I retrieved my lunchbox from my car and scarfed down a jar of brain soup."

"Dad called the next morning."

"I was starting to figure out that Derrel had a sixth sense-thing going on, where he knew exactly what to say to make people feel better."

"What the hell happened to this guy?"

"Double Ds was actually the Double Dime Dinner, but no one bothered to call it that, even though the nickname made it sound like a strip club."

"After parting ways with Marcus and Ed, I drove home."

"My cell phone chimed with an incoming text message as I was carefully writing the date on the side of a jar."

"I finished up my paperwork, then checked the computer to see if there were any bodies scheduled to be picked up by a funeral home today."

"I drove home in a cold sweat, arguing with myself the whole way."

"Hunger prodded me, as if to taunt me about the loss of my brains."

"I sat in my car and bit my lower lip as I considered my situation."

"I headed into the morgue early, hoping to god that an-other body had been brought in while I was off."

"As soon as Dr. Leblanc finished up and returned to the main building I called Scott Funeral Home and asked for Kang, only to be told he wasn't coming in until noon and no, they could not give me his personal information or cell phone number."

"Making my getaway was the first step."

"After checking the styrofoam cooler to be sure every-thing was still pretty frozen, I headed to the hospital."

"I ended up going back to the diner, simply because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go where I would have the room to spread out and look everything over."

"Herbert Singleton wasn't a zombie—just an asshole who could only get laid if the girl was too wasted to say no."

"I've never been anything remotely resembling "ath-letic."

"Oh, Ed did his best to shoot me again, but I'd just gob-bled down two brains worth of brainsicle, and I was fast."

"Together we managed to get my Honda unstuck, but be-fore we headed back to town we returned to where the four-wheelers were parked."

"My dad and I raked up beer cans for the last couple of hours of daylight, then I headed back over to Marcus's house."