By Blue
In all honesty, I was thinking about borrowing Cheshire's question mark for my rating. I just liked the last half of the book much, much more than the first half. But, if I somehow average it out in my mind, it comes up to a pretty good four stars. Awesome first book, J. Giambrone! The characters didn't necessarily appeal to me too much, some being a little cray-cray, but the plot and suspense that built up throughout the book really made me keep turning the pages (figuratively - I read a PDF version of it) and want to know more.
Characters
Kaylee: As the main character, I thought it was a creative and interesting choice to make her mute - SPOILER? KIND OF? - for so much of the book. She really matured into her protagonistic role at the end of the story, but it took a little for me to like her. Just a couple of pages into the book, I almost threw it at the wall (again, this is figurative - I would never throw my computer at a wall) out of annoyance at her. For example, after the Armageddon or whatnot takes place, her brother is trying to stab her after killing her mother and she's just like, 'Nah, man, he's weird. Imma go read my book now'. Thankfully, she starts coming to her senses a few minutes later, and really does grow throughout the story into a character that I liked and supported. Also, another very good redeeming quality of her - she's a complete bookworm. In the whole novel, she's reading this one book called Ghostliest, which is about two ghost hunters in some catacombs. It's awesome. I love bookworms.
Dustin: Him, I did like. He was supportive, but not overwhelming, in a very good side-kick-y way. Even though Kaylee was quite annoying at first, he stuck by her and was there through good times and bad, and really brought the story together. When it got rough - especially during the first half, when Kaylee was being her old, helpless self - he was the character that compelled me to keep reading.
Sara: Ok, ok, I know she wasn't really a main main character, but she's so cute and awesome I just had to mention it. She's like a super supportive, great little sister. End tangent.
Kaylee's father: Besides the fact that he's absent for like half the book, he was a really decent character once he started showing up. Steady and calm, he's just what Kaylee and Dustin needed. I love father figures in books, and he took that role very well.
Side characters: All the other characters did exactly what they needed to do - be evil, be funny, be annoying, whatever. They filled out the story well and made it more interesting to read.
Setting
In the real world, albeit after some sort of global disaster has hit, turning most people into killing zombie-ish creatures (I won't spoil any more). Giambrone did a good job in illustrating the gradual change in society and setting as the apocalypse took full effect and affected the physical setting.
Plot
This is summed up pretty accurately in the summary. An apocalypse happens where people are turned into what seems to be mind-controlled zombies that want to kill the few normal people who somehow survived the change. The main character, Kaylee, joins a group of rebels - normal people - who fight to survive and reverse the disaster. Solid, relatively fresh plotline for a YA novel.
Writing
Ok, this is where I start to get a little biased. It's been a long time since I read legitimate YA fiction, and I think that I'm just not used to the style any more. Yes, I've been reading books like The Book Thief and The Name of the Wind, but I feel like those books were written for an older audience than this one. The writing style and language is quite juvenile, which is good for the age group that it is aimed at - I'm assuming middle school level? It was a shock to me for the first few chapters, but once I got used to it, the style did help bring the book to the tone that it was meant to and didn't distract much from the plot or characters. Of course, it did have more colloquial parts, like, ""Hang on, man,” said Dustin. “She’s like, sorta with me. I brought her here, so I said she could be here already. Or else she wouldn’t a come along. You know?” But, it also had very precisely written, detailed writing, as seen in the following quote, "With hypnotized, staring eyes, the dupes didn’t seem part of the real world anymore. Not even gunshot wounds deterred them from crawling inside past the corpses of their compatriots." Overall, it had a good, solid writing style for a young adult novel.
"If nothing else, she could finally find out what those ghost hunters were up to down in that catacomb."
That is all.