Another book I finished this month: Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter. It is due to be published in October.

I leapt in and started reading this just on the strength of the title, being a bit of a zombie fan, so I didn’t notice that this is a book aimed at the teen market which I haven’t been part of for well over thirty years. For me the experience wasn’t so great for that very reason: there was a bit too much high school politics for my taste – lots of ‘does he fancy me?’, ‘does he want to go out with me?’, ‘do I fancy him?’

It is what I imagine Twilight to be, but with zombies instead of vampires. A bit Beverley Hills 90210.

In spite of all that, the bits that didn’t concern who was wearing what, and don’t the bad boys look hunky, just about got me through.

The story is nothing to do with the Lewis Carroll stories at all, by the way, it is just that the main character is a 16-year-old girl called Alice Bell. This is probably a good thing. I have read a few reviews of identically-titled books that are based on Lewis Carroll and they sound very bad indeed. This book is original. It featured very little of the gore normally associated with the zombie genre, in fact nothing very gory at all, and there is a lot more of the supernatural/spiritual than you would normally get.

Probably not a book for fans of the George A. Romero films, but I expect this will go down well with Twilight fans. Parents can be reassured that this is in no way a corrupting book. Even the boy-girl stuff is very chaste. While it isn’t my cup of tea it is well-enough written, and ideal for the market that it is aimed for.