Melankalia's Reviews > The First Days

I cannot understand what everyone sees in this book. I was expecting "Thelma & Louise" plus zombies, and that's...sorta...where it started, but it just got worse and worse as it went along. To begin with, the (somewhat) interesting action scenes did not in any way make up for having to hear about everyone's feelings every three seconds. About halfway through the book, I felt like I'd gone from "Thelma & Louise" + zombies, to "The View" + zombies. I think if it had been written in first person that aspect might not have been as awful, but that's not saying much. And don't even get me started on the paragraphs that try to cram in what all of the characters are doing/feeling.

"Katie felt wetness flowing down her own face as she pulled Jenni into an embrace. Jason threw his arms around both of them while Jack barked for attention. Katie kissed both Jenni and Jason on the cheek firmly, then hugged them again. It felt delicious to be alive and with them once more."

Seriously? We don't need to know what everyone is doing after each tiny bit of action. Honestly, I swear we don't. Also, note to authors: Having your character "feel delicious" when they've just survived nearly being eaten by zombies is, at best, really lame.

The other thing that bothered me was how often observations were made when the writing should've been more background.

"The first obstacle was in plain view. The library had a set of glass double doors with a small foyer between them. Trapped in the entryway was an old man, dead, hungry, and beating on the interior door. It was kind of funny that he still clung to his library book."

Now, if these were someone's thoughts, I would've had no problem with them. But this is only one example of the many descriptive paragraphs between dialog, where there is no clear point of view as to who is making the observation.

In conclusion, if you can manage to ignore all the touchy feely stuff this still makes for a fairly uninteresting zombie book with subpar writing. At least that's my opinion on it.