The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong: A Zombie Love Story

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The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong: A Zombie Love Story

4.5 of 5 stars 4.50 · rating details · 16 ratings · 9 reviews

Teenage writer Eleanor Armstrong tells the story of her life as a collection of Facebook-esque entries interspersed with the chapters of the novel she is writing. She starts out writing a nice, quiet high school romance, depicting the love triangle between ultra-hip and smart Sarah – who is really just Eleanor with great hair, her geeky pal Marky – who is Eleanor’s pal in...more

Paperback, 324 pages

Published September 13th 2009 by Booksurge Publishing

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Oct 11, 2010 Kulsuma (sunshine and stardust) rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong is humorous, action-packed and memorable. The main character, Eleanor, describes herself as a ‘plain-unusual’ girl; however, similarly to the character of Sarah that she creates in her story, she can be witty and spunky. Eleanor created the character of Sarah to project the traits that she wanted in herself, but thought she was lacking. I believe that by the end of the novel, Eleanor accepts herself for who she is.

The novel is laid out in such a way...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 30, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, ya-paranormal

Eleanor Armstrong has a very interesting Independent Study project: she's writing a novel. Her novel is about a very pretty--yet smart, and unpretentious--cheerleader named Sarah, and her boyfriend-to-be, Brandon.

We get to see her novel progress, chapter by chapter. Interspersed between the chapters are blog posts describing events in her own life. Eleanor's father is an FBI Agent. Her stepmother--whom Eleanor doesn't like--is a Home Economics teacher at another high school. She also has a young...more Eleanor Armstrong has a very interesting Independent Study project: she's writing a novel. Her novel is about a very pretty--yet smart, and unpretentious--cheerleader named Sarah, and her boyfriend-to-be, Brandon.

We get to see her novel progress, chapter by chapter. Interspersed between the chapters are blog posts describing events in her own life. Eleanor's father is an FBI Agent. Her stepmother--whom Eleanor doesn't like--is a Home Economics teacher at another high school. She also has a younger stepbrother, Brock, who pretty much ignores her.

What starts out as a light teenage romance novel grows darker, as suddenly, there are zombies taking over Minneapolis.

The zombie influence, no doubt, is from Eleanor's best friend, Marky.

This book goes back and forth between Eleanor's novel and Eleanor's blog. What we learn in the blog, eventually, is that her best friend, Marky, ends up dating a girl named Lily, who proceeds to take up his time and focus. Where Marky would comment on most of E's blogposts, he no longer does.

What happens to Eleanor, as she plows on with the novel, is she goes a little nuts. Not in a stark-raving acting out way, but in a "she always seemed so quiet until she ran amok that day." She has huge issues with her mother, who abandoned her and her father. She can't stand her stepmother. She grows to resent her dad, and starts to see him as a sort of pervert. Her best friend has abandoned her--just like her mom--and she is essentially alone.

Though her fictional alter ego is being attacked by zombies, we sense that Eleanor gets off on the idea of smashing in people's skulls. Between the start of school and winter break, Eleanor gets a lot of "going crazy" accomplished. Some of the issues will work themselves out, most likely. Others...who knows? There are a few things Eleanor does that are across the line between normal and disturbed behavior. Some of them are potentially dangerous to others.

I like the way author K.A. Schloegel layers Eleanor's fiction with her blog. I wish we'd spent a little less time in the novel, and more in Eleanor's blog. This could have been a wonderful psychological study on how Eleanor's life crossed over into fiction, and maybe vice versa.

That's just my take. As it is, "The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong" is an enjoyable read. There are lots of sweet pop-culture references--even one to the Abbott & Costello "Who's on First?" sketch--and the novel-within-the-novel is written with the right tone for a high school girl.

Eleanor is funny and smart in print. Her dealings in the real world seem less successful. She's especially unmoored when Marky and Lily hook up. She becomes very isolated. In the end, Sarah defeats the Zombie King, and all good things happen to her. I'm not sure what will happen to Eleanor. I think her personal zombies might just end up eating her brains in the end.

(less)

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Jan 28, 2010 Lizzy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Eleanor isn't popular, she doesn't think she's pretty, nor does she think the guy of her dreams, Elijah, will ever look twice at her. Sarah, the character Eleanor creates for her zombie novel, is everything Eleanor wishes she could be. Of course, the reader sees that they're more alike than Eleanor realizes.

I think that one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much was because it was so easy to relate to Eleanor. She's forced to deal with an unrequited crush, the possibility of losing her best...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 12, 2010 Eleni ( La Femme Readers ) rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong: A Zombie Love Story is a well-written, action packed zombie novel. From the beginning, Eleanor presents herself in two different ways. The character named Sarah in her zombie novel is the beautiful, popular, Eleanor she always wanted to be. But, in real life, she's just an average girl. You get to know the real Eleanor through her blog entries which you can find after each chapter of her novel. I first thought this writing style would get confusing...more

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Sep 24, 2009 Margaret rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong is an action packed tale of teen love. You immediately feel like you know Eleanor and remember all the years of high school crushes and boredom that lead to the creation of drama all around. It is a page turner you'll get lost in- smile with and have moments of goosebumps during as you feel Eleanor's fears and her surprises. I loved this book and would strongly recommend it to anyone!

OK...so maybe the fact that I'm about to marry the author makes me...more

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Mar 01, 2012 Kara-karina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Don't get yourself fooled by a really bad cover, folks, this book is a little gem!

An absolute delight, cheeky and bittersweet, ironic and smart, PSEA is a story within story.

Eleanor is a normal girl who quietly stumbles through her high school highs and lows. She is one of the invisible ones, whose name hardly anyone remembers and who has a secret crash on a popular jock.

Everything changes when she decides to write a high-school romance as her English literature project.

Between hilarious zombi...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Karissa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I got this book directly from the author. I am a bit leery about getting books that way because I have gotten some pretty bad ones, so I was ecstatic to discover that this was a really neat book. It was creative and very engaging!

Eleanor is a high school girl, dealing with feeling in visible to her classmates. She does have one superpower though and that is the power to write. She takes an independent study class and starts writing a story about a pop girl with brains; it's supposed to be your t...more I got this book directly from the author. I am a bit leery about getting books that way because I have gotten some pretty bad ones, so I was ecstatic to discover that this was a really neat book. It was creative and very engaging!

Eleanor is a high school girl, dealing with feeling in visible to her classmates. She does have one superpower though and that is the power to write. She takes an independent study class and starts writing a story about a pop girl with brains; it's supposed to be your typical high school romance, that is until somehow zombies work their way into the story. Then suddenly the story turns into a non-stop fight for all of the humanity in Minneapolis.

I really enjoyed this book. It switches between the zombie story that Eleanor is writing and blog posts done by her about her life in school. Schloegel does a pretty good job of keeping the two stories separate and the stories are both very engaging separately and together. I liked that Schloegel uses one distinct writing style for the story Eleanor is writing and a different one for the blog posts she writes. This way of telling the story was very creative and it was interesting to see how Eleanor's book was influenced by the actions happening to her in high school.

Schloegel's writing style is sharp, energetic, and enjoyable. He uses a lot of short sentences, but rather than be annoying this helps the scenes seem sharper and the action seem more immediate. The action scenes are down really, really well. I loved the snarky attitude of some of the characters. The wit brought into the story kept it from getting too serious and was really amusing.

Anyone who has read previous reviews knows that I really love a good zombie story, and this one was actually one of the more fun and better ones I have read. Even with all the hilarious zombie mayhem, Schloegel manages to touch on some serious issues around kids learning to be themselves and finding their niche in both life and school. It was nice to have to story carry some weighty topics as well as be lots of fun.

I had a couple minor quibbles. Eleanor bases some of the characters in her book on real-life characters; in Mikey's case she doesn't change the name. This got a little bit confusing because I couldn't remember what the Mikey in the story did vs. the Mikey in the blog post. This may have been intentional and it wasn't horribly confusing, but every once in a while I had to check back to see what I had already read about Mikey. I also found a couple minor typos in the book, nothing huge.

I seriously enjoyed this book and hope to read more books from Schloegel in the future. I hope this book starts getting some more attention because it really is a great book, in fact it is one of the better zombie books I have read.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Oct 26, 2011 Velvet rated it 5 of 5 stars

Awesome coming of age story with zombies thrown in... eeek!

I really enjoyed the style of writing in this book which includes two parallel story lines that portray the different perspectives of the characters.

The whole story is presented with blog entries with its comments and a fictional piece that the main character is writing. Yup, fiction within fiction. Cool, huh?

1 like · like · see review

Jun 16, 2012 Tara Andrews added it · review of another edition

bought this and realized it was a teeny bopper story! it was ok

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