From the Bookshelf of Apocalypse Whenever…

The Girl with All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)

M.R. Carey

Start date: August 19, 2016

Finish date: September 1, 2016

Discussion: AW BOOK CLUB (spoilers)

Discussion leader: Gertie

Why we're reading this: Read now, discussion opens September 1st.
Link to discussion: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...…more
[close] Read now, discussion opens September 1st.
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AW BOOK CLUB (spoilers)

* What is a good book for AW discussion? (Nominations pool)
By Gertie · 65 posts · 218 views

last updated Oct 18, 2025 05:31PM

* AW Book Club: what we've read
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last updated Dec 10, 2019 09:01AM

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What Members Thought

Oct 09, 2017 Netanella rated it it was amazing

Shelves: horror, zombies, 2017-october-reading-challenges, shrooms

The best books are the hardest to review. You stumble and fumble over your words, because you want to get it just right, to capture the essence of the book you have just read, the book that just changed your perception in just such a way, but you can't seem to find the words that can capture the author's vision and ideas and thoughts that the author has already done, so perfectly.

This was excellently done. And highly recommended. It's most certainly not another zombie book. Much, much more than ...more

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Nov 25, 2015 Colleen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: zombies, thriller, horror, fiction

This book pulls off what so many attempt and succeeds brilliantly. Perhaps one of the best books I've read this year and I've read a bunch lately. This is one of those books that transcends the "zombie" genre and even propels itself through horror into science fiction.

Fantastic job with the protagonist. I think children characters, like child actors, have a tough role. They are secondary to action generally because of obvious size issues, naive, and have to avoid the too "precocious" or "annoyi This book pulls off what so many attempt and succeeds brilliantly. Perhaps one of the best books I've read this year and I've read a bunch lately. This is one of those books that transcends the "zombie" genre and even propels itself through horror into science fiction.

Fantastic job with the protagonist. I think children characters, like child actors, have a tough role. They are secondary to action generally because of obvious size issues, naive, and have to avoid the too "precocious" or "annoying" problem. The Flavia de Luce books spectacularly do it well and the 10 year old narrator of this book is almost Scout like (and Flavia-ish in being a child prodigy).

She's also locked in a tiny cell with only a picture of a kitten tacked on wall to amuse her, 20 years in a dystopian totalitarian nightmare zombie overrun world. The government noticed that some of the zombie chidlren had retained intelligence, so rounded up a bunch, and sent them off to a remote lab in the middle of nowhere for testing and schooling.

Basically this book has all the elements of Frankenstein. It's an updated The Last of Us meshed with Frankenstein. The zombie children all have that stumbling idiot/genius thing going on--where they passively kill time in their cells by solving equations in their head and treasuring every bit of human contact they have. A flower blows the narrators mind but ultimately over the course of the events in the book she goes from a monster that's kept muzzled to leader of the rag tag group.

For all the complaints I've had regarding horror books where the plot involves protecting child and I find myself in love with a book where the child has to protect all the adults (some of whome are less than awesome) from outside dangers and herself. This book has to juggle a lot of view points and does it really well--the few that were born before the outbreak, the bleak life of the teenager soldier who had only known post-apocalyptic world, to what lay in the future. The end is an especially ambitious one. ...more

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Aug 01, 2017 Krista rated it it was amazing

Amazing book about a little girl who is treated as a monster. Melanie just goes about her young life being tied down in a wheel chair to go to "school", eating grubs once a week, and just being the friendly and intelligent girl she is. She has no idea she and all the children restrained in wheelchairs with her are part of an experiment on a military base and that the world outside is not what she has learned about. Part The Walking Dead and part I am Legend, you will fall in love with Melanie an ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I picked this book up while visiting the Women and Children First bookstore in Andersonville (Chicago neighborhood) based on their recommendation card and I'm so glad I did! IIRC, this book is for "fans of the zombie apocalypse, Joss Whedon's show Firefly (and movie Serenity), and badass kid heroes" (or something along those lines) and I was not disappointed by that description. I had not heard of this book until browsing their SciFi section but it's apparently already been made into a movie tha ...more

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