Review: Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Alice in Zombieland (White Rabbits Chronicles #1)

By Gena Showalter

Release Date: September 25, 2012

Publisher: Harlequin TEEN

Hardcover, 404 pages

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….

3.5 Stars

Review

Despite the name derivation and the title of the series, Alice in Zombieland is totally irrelevant to Alice in Wonderland. Yeah, I'm kind of shocked as well. I mean, you title the book Alice in Zombieland and expect no one to think differently. Although it is a little disappointing that there are no rabbits nor any Red Queens in this book, Alice in Zombieland was a thrilling paranormal of zombie slaying.

The book begins with Alice prior to her knowledge of zombies. We see Alice and her sister finding their father's zombie antics ridiculous. But Alice's opinion of her father soon changes when she and her family get into a car accident and she sees that the zombies that were once fables are now real and out there to kill her. Now she must learn to fight these creatures to save herself and avenge her family as she meets more people with the same mission as her.

I am not the greatest fan of Gena Showalter. She has a total gift with the adult urban paranormals she writes, but YA just doesn't seem to be her specialty. Her other YA series, Intertwined, was a difficult read due to its shaky plot and ridiculous plot twists. Although Alice in Zombieland was a definite improvement over Intertwined, I still found the plot and pacing faulty.

Most paranormal books have a ridiculously slow beginning that gradually builds up to an epic fight and this book is no exception. We are forced to face Alice who is still mourning her family, but manages to find a whole lot of time to think about how hot Cole is. Meanwhile, Alice and Cole are getting visions whenever they look at each other, which is a question that is never answered, FYI. Just saying, that is only the one of many questions that are asked but are never solved. Let's just say that we have no Sherlock Holmes here to explain away.

Even with all of the plot problems that existed in Alice in Zombieland, I found it incredibly fun to read. Alice has a unique narration that keeps the reader hooked throughout the book. Her flaws are quite numerous and some points she is quite dim, but there was always another character that would support her, usually Cole. It was unusual to read about a protagonist who isn't either entirely dependent on others or is completely independent of others, so I liked the change in which Alice made so many careless mistakes and looked dumb, nevertheless there was someone there to keep her from falling completely off the cliff and able to steer back on track.

This book will totally blow your mind away and make you totally gaga for the next book in the series. Its flaws are really significant, but Gena Showalter makes up for it with her writing, electrically charging conclusion and a strong set of main characters. Sure, there were those flat characters that seemed out of place, but otherwise there were a minor issue. Overall, Alice in Zombieland is a great start to the White Rabbit Chronicles, whose name seems totally out of place with the zombie bashings and lack of rabbits.

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