Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: November 15th, 2012
Date finished: November 17th, 2012
So it's no secret that pretty much all I read consists of genre fiction, mostly paranormal fantasy, or romance (sometimes either of those genres aimed at young adults) or a mix of all of the above. So Felicia Day's Vaginal Fantasy Hangout was pretty much made for someone like me. Now, for most of the time the group has been running, I've read at least one, if not both of the books featured as Reads of the Month. However, this month (November), they feature zombie books, with at least a bit of a romantic element to them.
I'm not going to lie, I've read books with vampires, werewolves, all sorts of other kinds of shapeshifters (including dinosaurs, so thanks, VFH ladies!), ghosts, demons, angels, fairies, dark elves, you name it - I've probably read some variation of fantasy/romance where this was a feature. Until now, I'd drawn the line at zombies, however. My husband reads, and watches The Walking Dead, and I've caught the occasional episode. I watched Shaun of the Dead. I don't like horror, though, in any genre, so zombies tend to be something I avoid. I certainly don't see it as a successful starting point for anything with romantic elements. Clearly popular culture disagrees with me, though, as Warm Bodies was a huge publishing success and now looks like it's going to be a really rather entertaining film.
One of the reasons I join online book clubs, and browse review sites, and book blogs and participate in the Cannonball Read is to discover new things. So while I was initially reluctant, I decided to give zombie fantasy a try. My Life as a White Trash Zombie is the story of Angel Crawford, who wakes up in the hospital after what appears to be a drug overdose. She was apparently found stark naked on the side of the highway, on the same night as there was an accident not too far away, and the driver of the car was found decapitated. With the head missing from the scene of the crime. Angel has no memory at all of how any of this came to pass, but is relieved that the police only question her, as a drug overdose is in violation of her parole.
She's given a bag of clothes and a letter from one of the nurses, where she's told to show up at the parish morgue for a new job, and she has to hold down the job for at least a month, or the police will be told about her OD, and she'll end up in jail. She's also given 6 bottles of some mysterious liquid, and told to drink one every other day. The letter also states that if she were to end up in prison, she'd be dead before long, so Angel is too scared to refuse the job offer.
At the morgue, she discovers that she's not only expected to drive a van and pick up corpses, she's also meant to help the morgue technicians with autopsies. Previously, Angel's not been able to see anything even vaguely gory without throwing up, but she now seems to be able to handle all sorts of disgusting smells and sights without so much as a dry heave. Strangest of all, the sight and smell of dead brains seem to drive her wild. Before long, Angel realises that she actually kind of likes her job, and wants to prove that she can stick with something, no matter what her deadbeat on again off again drug addict boyfriend or drunken father says. She just needs to figure out why she has an unnatural craving for brains, why dead bodies keep showing up decapitated, and who got her the job at the morgue in the first place?
For the first couple of chapters, I wasn't sure about Angel as a protagonist, and her no ambition deadbeat attitude. By the time she starts her job at the morgue, I was starting to warm up to her, and I'm very glad that I kept going with the book, as it turned out to be both a fairly exciting page turner, and lots of fun. Once Angel gets developed more as a character, and starts building her self esteem and accomplishing things, I really enjoyed her and her rather snarky wit. I wish she'd wised up about her abusive, drunken asshole of a dad, and extreme loser boyfriend sooner, but we can't have everything, now can we?
The way zombies are portrayed in the book is also really well done. Angel can pretty much survive any injury or damage as long as she ingests enough brains, and while she no longer feels the effects of pills or pot, she can eat human food as well, so long as she consumes brains every other day or so. The more energy she expends, the more often she has to have a brainy snack. Her job at the morgue is obviously perfect, and once she faces up to the fact that she's now the walking undead, she tries to research her "condition" as best she can, and gets on with things without complaining.
There's some pretty cool supporting characters as well (not the drunken dad or pothead boyfriend), and a subplot involving Angel's continued crush on one of the deputies who arrested her a while back. The book is not a romance, as such, but it looks like the romance angle might be stronger in the sequel (which I'm now pretty excited to read). So I still haven't had to face an actual main story romance where one or both of the characters is a zombie, and guess that'll have to be next on my list.
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