B’s life is kind of awful—Dad hits Mom on a regular basis and B has to pry them apart and try and make things better. So it’s probably no surprise that B is the surliest teenager you’d ever meet, ever. And as if that’s not bad enough, now there are zombies to contend with.

This is not your typical zombie book. It deals with surprisingly heavy themes (classism, racism, xenophobia, abuse…) so really I guess you’d say it’s sort of the Romero zombie book, as his movies tended to have underlying themes, too.

The thing that resonated most with me was the racism/abuse part. B’s dad is horribly racist. As in to the point where he wants the zombies to kill all the foreigners, THAT racist. And to keep from getting hit more, B has started to parrot the views as well. And that was the most interesting and saddest part of the book for me, because it was so understandable. How do you stand up to someone who could literally kill you if he got mad enough?

But the book isn’t all about “what would you do if?” type situations. There are also incredibly gory moments, so be warned. (But then I guess if you couldn’t handle scary things, you probably wouldn’t be reading a book like Zom-B anyway, right?)

I haven’t read any of Darren Shan’s other books, but I am very exited to look for them. And I will definitely be reading the sequel when it comes out in January.

Highly recommended.