Book Review and Giveaway: You are so Undead to me by Stacey Jay

For Megan Berry, being a Zombie Settler is a pain in the shoulder – literally. Not only do dead zombies get grave dirt on her favorite sundress and ruin her dates with “hot” guys, she also had a run in with some reanimated zombies some years back whose bites left marks both on her skin and her psyche. And now, someone in town is messing with black magic – putting her life and most importantly her chance to go to homecoming in danger.

So where to start? I love the premise here and the whole twist on the zombie idea, that there is a secret society whose purpose it is to take messages from the dead who are unsettled enough about some aspect of their deaths to crawl out their graves (one pervy guy just wanted to see a girl naked before he went to his eternal slumber). Author Stacey Jay gets points for creating a pretty plausible paranormal/real world co-existence.

If you asked me what genre this was, I wouldn’t really know what to say. The inclusion of zombies makes it paranormal, but it is not scary. Megan goes on dates with “hot” guys, but it’s not romantic. No one knows who the black magic villain is, but it’s not mysterious (and I figured out one of the “baddies” early on even though this person’s motive is out of left field and their m.o. highly dubious). There is a lot of kicking zombie butt, but I wouldn’t classify it as action. And both Megan and the story are way too shallow for it to be a drama. It’s kind of like the author tried to make it everything, but nothing really stuck.

I wouldn’t have really minded the uneven narrative if Megan had been a stronger character. She is said to possess the most impressive settler power in 70 years, but she spends most of her time rhapsodizing about how “hot” all the “hot” guys in her life are. (Granted, you’d find a lot of that if you read my diary from my sophomore year of high school, but fortunately you never will.)

Still, I liked the world creation so much that I would definitely be interested in reading the planned sequel Undead Much! I can only hope Megan will have grown out of her semi-grating boy crazy phase by then.

Want a second opinion? Hillary of The Book Reader also read it recently and loved it saying it was one of the best books she’s read in months.

So if you think this is something you’d like to read (despite my reservations), and you want to read it before its January 22nd release date, leave a comment telling me if you are on team zombie or team unicorn by Dec. 5th. I’ll announce the winner of my one advanced copy the next day.