Review: Warm Bodies

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Published by Atria

Genre: Adult something or other

$24 (US hardback)

241 pages

What it's about:

R is a young man with an existential crisis--he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, noidentity, and no pulse, but he has dreams.

After experiencing a teenage boy's memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and stragely sweet relationship with the victim's human girlfriend. Julie is a blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead, and the blurry line in between.



My thoughts:
Let me start this off by saying that it took me till halfway through the book to realize this was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Then I felt smart. Real smart. *Facepalm*

The whole reason I picked up this book was because the movie is being made (staring Nicholas Hoult! Yay!) and because it's staring Nick, I'm gonna go see it. And because I always try and read the book before seeing the movie, I picked up this book. I'm normally not a big fan of zombies (I'm Team Unicorn all the way) but I am so so so so so glad I picked this book up. I loved every word of it.

Like I said before, this is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but set in a dystopian future and staring a zombie Romeo and a human Juliet. Amazing right? But it is different enough from R&J that it did embarrassingly enough, take me a very long time to realize it. Marion's writing is phenomenal. It was funny, romantic, and horrifying all wrapped up. It wasn't the obvious funny either that is found in most humorous books. It was subtle. Which made it even more funny.

This is a book that I'm going to be talking about for a good chunk of time and will constantly be throwing in peoples faces, telling them to READ IT! It's an adult book but it has all the adorableness of young love added in. The book was so adorable and sweet that I was definitely crushing on R throughout the whole book. Yup, crushing on a zombie, that was a new one.

This is definitely a book that I highly recommend people read. Plus you know any book that has a blurb by Simon Pegg on the back cover is going to be awesome.

My rating: 10/10