Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel (REVIEW)

Zombies, science fiction, steampunk, AND Victorian you say? DEARLY, DEPARTED delivers in some of these areas, but falls short of really delivering on all its promises.

DEARLY, DEPARTED by Lia Habel
Published October 18, 2011 by Del Rey
480 Pages
eARC received via NetGalley
Order from Amazon
Lia Habel's website

Love can never die.

Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.

But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.

When I saw DEARLY, DEPARTED by Lia Habel on NetGalley, it automatically became my first request. Science fiction-meets-steampunk-meets-zombies?! You had me at hello! My own hype for this book became an undeniable and overwhelming force in my head. When I dug into the book and started reading, I found myself growing disappointed. The writing is nice and the plot is very original and unique, but there was just something…missing, I guess you could say. Or maybe it just had way too much to deal with.

Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris (REVIEW)

Looking for a comedy/horror crossover that will only take a few short hours to read? BAD TASTE IN BOYS has a few flaws, but not enough to keep you from having a great time!

Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris
Published July 12, 2011 by Delacorte Press
201 pages

Someone's been a very bad zombie.

Kate Grable is horrified to find out that the football coach has given the team steroids. Worse yet, the steroids are having an unexpected effect, turning hot gridiron hunks into mindless flesh-eating zombies. No one is safe--not her cute crush Aaron, not her dorky brother, Jonah . . . not even Kate!

She's got to find an antidote--before her entire high school ends up eating each other. So Kate, her best girlfriend, Rocky, and Aaron stage a frantic battle to save their town. . . and stay hormonally human.

BAD TASTE IN BOYS by Carrie Harris is a short, fun little book for those who like their zombies with a dose of comedy and fun (and maybe just a bit of horror). Following protagonist Kate, we are dropped into the mind of a high school student and future doctor who has science on the mind. She works as an athletic trainer with the school’s atrocious football team, and its coach may or may not have been giving the players something to turn them from blah into BRAIIIIINSSSSS.

Okay, fine, he was. That’s pretty obvious.

Kate deals with boys, her family, and her health all while facing the threat of a zombie apocalypse. The results range from scary to comical at times – mostly the latter for those of you who are squeamish. I learned an important lesson from this book – the crush of your dreams showing interest in you while the entire football team turns into zombies and begins to infect your town and school is very inopportune.

This book mixes humor and horror extremely well. By no means does the plot really make any logical sense in my opinion, especially how nobody besides Kate apparently noticed that member of the football team had suddenly developed a taste for brains and lumbering around in a daze. Everyone was apparently unaware that kids were turning into zombies left and right until the very end of the book, which also came very fast. I liked that the book was short, but at the same time I wished that at times it would have been faster paced and included more action. The sudden revelation of the villain was also a letdown, mostly because I had no idea who that character was even though they played into the plot early on apparently. The villain was a letdown, but the rest of the book was awesome with only very minor exceptions.

VERDICT: A fun little comedy/horror crossover with a letdown of a villain. For a few hours of fun, though, it’s a great read.

♥♥♥♥ - FOUR HEARTS