Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Title:  Warm Bodies
Author:  Isaac Marion
Series:  n/a
Publisher:  Atria
Publication Date:  April 26, 2011
Links:  Amazon | Goodreads
Rating: 

From Goodreads:

A zombie who yearns for a better life ends up falling in love—with a human—in this astonishingly original debut novel.

R is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he has dreams. He doesn’t enjoy killing people; he enjoys riding escalators and listening to Frank Sinatra. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.

Not just another zombie novel, Warm Bodies is funny, scary, and deeply moving.

Review:

Let me just preface this review with this: Best. Zombie. Book. Ever.

I take author recommendations very seriously, especially when they come from author's I admire and respect. So, when I saw this blog post from Maggie Stiefvater giving ten reasons why I must read Warm Bodies, I knew it was going on my TBR list. Usually, that's the end of it for a few months because I have a rather large TBR list and if it's not new or I haven't been waiting ages for it to be released, it stays on the list for awhile. Lo and behold, a Goodreads giveaway in which I win a shiny new copy of this amazing book. I find it's much easier for me to read a book if I already have it in hand, and it gets read a lot sooner that way, too.

So, what, you ask, makes this the best zombie book ever? Well, a lot of things. The story was hopeful and touching but not saccharine sweet. The writing was superb. (I laughed out loud at 'gastromically celibate'...just wait, you'll see.) It's a zombie romance, for crying out loud, but it's honest and it has a message, and it's still chock-full of those zombie-rific elements that make it kind of disturbing.

R is more verbose than your average undead zombie. He likes to ride the escalators at the airport where his zombie clan resides, and he listens to Frank Sinatra in his airplane of a house. He falls in love with the living human girl whose life he saves. He wants to live again. He's beginning to change. And with the change in R comes a change in the rest of the world, albeit reluctantly.

This book was so cleverly written. It's not everyday that I find myself rooting for the undead, but from the beginning, I hoped things would work out for R. This was seriously one of the best pieces of fiction I've read in awhile, and I'm telling everyone about it. Seriously, I want to make everyone I know read this book so we can discuss how it is far superior to any other zombie book out there. It's poignant, and it makes a statement, and at the same time, it's funny.

Oh, and did I mention this novel is being made into a movie?? And Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead fame, blurbed it? Seriously.

*I won a copy of this book thru a Goodreads 'First Reads' giveaway.*
 
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Labels: isaac marion, reviews, warm bodies, zombies