{Review} Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Released: September 25th 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Hardcover, 404 pages
Series: White Rabbit Chronicles
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Buy: Barnes and Noble | Amazon

She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.

Rating

I decided to rerate this book to four stars on Goodreads. I couldn't help myself. I was thinking about it the other night and the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "This book deserves more than three stars at least." Just can't help it, I really liked this book, despite one of my friends in particular telling me it was a mess. :/ (Just so you know, that really pissed me off. So please forgive me, whoever that reads this, if I sound a bit angry.)

Spoilers ahead.

Anyway. This book is about a girl named Alice--obviously, right?--getting into a traumatizing car accident with her parents and little sister. Her family died that night and it broke her. And as soon as she found out what caused the wreck, she wants revenge. When she starts going to a new school, she finds out what she is, and what he father told her...well she should've listened. So Alice goes to a new school and meets Cole. Cliche bad boy, but he grew on me. When Alice finds out that zombies caused her parents wreck, she teams up with Cole and his gang to fight through nests and packs of them.

Let's talk about the story line. I thought it was thought out pretty well. I do admit, in some spots it was predictable, but it made me think, "Damn, how is that going to go well?" I loved the tension within the characters and the actual story. It even had a little action in there as well. And it was definitely emotional. The zombies in this book are..well..different. They're not dumb like you'd think most of them would be. Naturally. They team up and plan shit together and attack viciously. It's quite intriguing.

Alice Bell struck me right off as a weak heroine. You know why? Because she was broken. What else would you expect from a 16 year old girl that just lost her family? I would definitely be the same way going up and down the halls of a new school with stares and whispers that say, "Is that the girl that lost her whole family?" It would drive me fucking insane. And it drove me insane for her. I felt deep sympathy for her. And I know it's not the first time that there's a heroine in other books like this. But I felt really sad for this girl. And I'm glad that Kat came in. But I'll get to her later.

The hero of the book is Cole. And to be honest I hated him to begin with. He's dominate, pissy, and narcissistic. But like I said, he grew on be like any other bad boys would. Why? Because that's what bad boys are meant to do. That's why they're bad boys. :/ And he has his reasons for being one, too. He lost family just like Alice did. He definitely had a sweet side, of course when it came to Alice he did. And I loved it when there were ColexAlice scenes. He was caring. And you rarely saw that out of him throughout the book.

As for the secondary characters, they were all pretty cool. As all secondary characters are like, you don't know much about them. Except for Kat. I really liked her, she had to have been my favorite character out of all of them. She's funny, perky, easy to get along with, and in the end (of the book) you just want to hug the living shit out of her. For the other characters, there's not much to say, other than I was okay with them. Didn't really care for Cole's crew. Or rather "hunting buddies."

Gena Showalter writes good books, adult and young adult. And this is one of them. When you pick this book up at the bookstore, or look at it online, and you want a retelling of Alice in Wonderland but with zombie infected creatures, don't read this book. It's anything but. Though, there are some part in it that's got to do with the Lewis Caroll version. But it's definitely not going through with the original story line. I've seen reviews that said that they was expecting a retelling, but were highly disappointed and gave it a low rating because of that. I knew what I was picking up at the store, and I read it and enjoyed it. I recommend this book to any zombie lover. C: