Press Releases
My Life as a White Trash Zombie: Book Review
- 15 July 2011
- MaDonna Flowers
‘My Life as a White Trash Zombie’
Sometimes you have to die to get your life on track
Zombies don’t necessarily spring to mind when you’re thinking about main characters. I mean, they’re shambling corpses with icky bits falling off here and there. They’re the cannon fodder for a movie hero, the yucky boogey man in your closet eyeing your noggin for a midnight snack. Not exactly someone I want to relate to.
These pre-conceived notions about zombies makes Diana Rowland’s latest book that much more of a fun surprise. “My Life as a White Trash Zombie,” (Daw Fantasy, $7.99), follows the life of Angel Crawford – who is no angel. She’s a pill-popping, high school dropout with a felony record. She has no job, no prospects, and no one she can rely on, unless you count her drunkard father and loser boyfriend.
When Angel wakes up in the hospital recovering from an apparent drug overdose, she finds that her clothes are gone and that there isn’t a scratch on her. Even more disconcerting is the fact that her memories of the ordeal are completely nonexistent. At first this seems like just another low-point in a lifetime of rock-bottoms, but she realizes that something has changed. Her cravings for booze and pills are gone and replaced by a craving for something else. You get a gold star if you said brains.
Someone mysterious sets her up with a job at the local coroner’s office, where she has access to brains to munch on, as well as step in the right direction of turning her “life” around. However, brainless bodies start piling up and that’s where the mystery begins. Angel wants to get to the bottom of the trouble before her own lack of brains turns her from white trash into a real monster.
Rowland does a good job of keeping Angel an engaging character throughout. It’s fun to watch Angel as she learns about her new state of being, while still trying to cope with a life that is far from perfect. Though entertaining, it’s not exactly action-packed. Fans of Laurel K. Hamilton or Charlaine Harris, who are expecting gun slinging and steamy scenes, may be disappointed. However, Angel is ultimately a character that many people will be able to identify with and root for.
Rowland also pays homage to many things that have made the zombie genre so popular while still managing to make her main character not simply relatable, but completely likable – no easy feat. Certainly, she plays with tropes a little, but I think most zombie fans will get a kick out of the notion of a main character finding his or herself as one of the walking dead.
“My Life as a White Trash Zombie” is a fun summer read that you’ll have a hard time putting down.
This guest post was written by Katy England for HalloweenCostumes.com, where you can find a variety of zombie costumes for Halloween.
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