Book Review- Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Title: Alice in Zombieland

 Author: Gena Showalter

Series:  White Rabbit Chronicles #1

Published:  5 October 2012 by Mira

Length: 404 pages

Source: Publisher

Summary : She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.
Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.
Her father was right. The monsters are real….
To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

Review: When I first saw the title, author and cover, I got REALLY excited. Having highly enjoyed Intertwined, (review here) and with a name and cover like that, you’d think that you were getting a reimagining of Carroll’s original, but with zombies involved. Not so. Instead, there’s a contemporary paranormal story with a heavy dose of romance. And (as I remember) no chance to wear that dress (I don’t mind pretty dress covers as long as they’re relevant to the plot). The only connections with Carroll’s story are the fact that Alice is called Alice and the chapter titles are quotes with undead spins. Now we’ve cleared that up, we can move on.

It’s Alice’s birthday when their car crashes. Alice is the only  survivor, and as she wakes, she thinks of her now dead family. And the monsters surrounding her car. She starts a new school, where she is accepted by part time hospital buddy Kat into the friendship group and introduces her to the group of tough guys, with the likes of Cole, Frosty and the others. There, she is told what actually happened: It was zombies! Alice decides that she will eradicate all zombies ever. That’s once she’s trained with Cole.

After being disappointed at the lack of Alice in Wonderland, I got a bit disappointed by the way the plot of Alice in Zombieland panned out too. It’s really heavily romance orientated, which is fine if you like this. It’s just really not my thing, and I don’t feel it was done amazingly. Luckily, there is a good amount of zombie slaying, which is more up my street.

Alice could have been a great character, but I felt there was something a bit lacking around her. My favourite character is Kat-she’s cool, witty, and a good friend. Close second comes Alice’s grandparents and their failed attempts to be cool.

The pacing. Started out really nicely with awesome stuff happening. The middle was dragged out a lot and the ending could have been really amazing and emotional, but ended up over before it had really begun.

There was some good points though. The characters, that weren’t fitting the mean/tough girl/guy stereotype were  really good. And the zombies! While I don’t approve of the sparkling qualities, the idea of spirit form and the emphasis on spirit as opposed to corpses is generally awesome.

Overall:  Strength 2 tea to an underwhelming book with some good features, but not really my thing, despite first impressions.

Links: | Goodreads | Author website |