Review: Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

 

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….

Hardcover, 404 pages

Published September 25th 2012 by Harlequin Teen

(summary grabbed from GoodReads)

I told myself I was not going to read this book. I loved the original Alice in Wonderland and it is what first got me into reading. My grandma's name was Alice and when we would watch the Disney cartoon movie, she would tell me the movie was about her. I would be like "Grandma's silly haha," but it got me curious in the story and I read the book. I fell in love with reading at that point, so yeah, I'm kind of attached to the book. I sort of don't want anything to ruin it for me. Not that one badly written story could ruin a lifetime's attachment, but… you understand.

It would be impossible for Alice in Zombieland to ruin Alice in Wonderland since the two have nothing short of details in common.  The similarity between the two novels ends with both main characters first names being Alice.  My brain made no connection between the stories; there was no "Oh I see how she did that to incorporate zombies" or "this reminds me of that scene."

None. Of.  That.

If you were looking for Alice in Wonderland meets zombie appocalypse, look elsewhere.  And it is not just the name that implies this notion: all over the cover of the book it says “Off with their heads!”  I was horrifically disappointed, as this could have been so good.  At the very least, it is a cool book to look at.

I dropped it after getting 200 pages in with still no real zombie goodness.  What I concluded from these 200 pages was that Alice was an inconsistent character.  She didn't have any defined, consistant traits.  For example, she is a sheltered and fairly modest girl in the beginning, and then marches out of her friends house in hooker heels without so much as a grimace.  This did not add up to me.  Also, I found the main love interest uninteresting, as he was so over the top with the bad boy persona to the point of ridiculousness.  I couldn’t have cared less about them getting together -- I WANTED ZOMBIES.

Final Thought: 1 toadstool for the White Rabbit in the sky

                          But it’s out of 300 so it doesn’t really count.

This review is also available on GoodReads