Book Review: The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies by Lynn Messina

Welcome to our stop of Novel's The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies book blog tour!
This is also Suzanne's first book review for us, so give her a shout out in your comments!

Synopsis: Hattie Cross knows what you're thinking: Zombie sex? Ewwwww. But she also knows that since a virus turned 99.9999 percent of human males into zombies, it's statistically impossible to meet-let alone date-the remaining 0.00001 percent. So she writes "The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies" to help her fellow single women navigate the zombie-relationship waters. 


Her practical how-to impresses the CEO of the largest drug company in the world, and before she knows it, Hattie, a reporter for a downmarket tabloid that specializes in conspiracy theories, is sitting down with the woman who single-handedly invented the zombie-behavioral-modification market. Granted access to the inner sanctum of zombaceuticals, she meets an actual, living, breathing M-A-N. 


Now Hattie, the consummate professional, is acting like a single girl at the end of the twentieth century: self-conscious, klutzy and unable to form a coherent sentence without babbling. Worst of all, the human male appears to have impaired her ability to think clearly. Because all of a sudden she's convinced a conspiracy is afoot at the drug company and it seems to go all the way to the top!




About the Author:  Lynn Messina is the author of six novels, including Little Vampire Women and Fashionistas, which has been translated into 15 languages and is in development as a feature film. She attended Washington University in St. Louis where she studied English Literature. Her writing has also appeared in Self and Modern Bride, among other publications. She lives in New York City with her husband and sons. Connect with Lynn on her website, blog, Twitter or GoodReads.


Review: This was a fairly new experience for me reading a book about Zombies. I have only read one before and it was quite a different story. I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive - thinking about Zombie sex --- Ewwwww! Indeed, but I, as always, was up for the adventure this book was. After just a few chapters I knew I wouldn’t stop till I got the “scoop” from tabloid writer Hattie Cross.

The book is well written, the characters, non-zombies, are quite likeable and it was interesting how the author included chapters from the Guide within the story. I had a little trouble staying with the descriptive parts of dining on live animal brains (eeewwww), the tutorial on how to reattach zombie parts that may "oops! Come off during zombie sex" and the overall description of the reliving. 

It took me awhile to catch on that most of the characters in the story have never known real M-E-N – except maybe their Father before he became a Zombie so they know squat about men. The older women in the story are described as not having a problem living without a man and NOT dating zombies because they are satisfied with their memories. The author never mentions the possibility of same sex relationships, which seems a real possibility if the world is full of women, void of real men, and otherwise occupied by the reliving who are smelly, expensive and missing appendages.

I read it through and thoroughly enjoyed the sinister plot of a “lab gone bad.” If you are an adventurous reader, and not too squeamish, I would definitely recommend it. And even if you are squeamish, you can always just skim those parts. It’s a good read!!

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I was sent this book, free of charge, for review purposes, from  Novel Publicity . No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it.