4 out of 4 stars
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Imagine waking up in a coffin and, worse still, at your own funeral. This is the reality that Sharon Backovic wakes up to after dying at a friend’s wedding. At the wedding, she had been tackled by a crazed woman after catching the bouquet and had died. She then, weirdly enough, wakes up in her coffin; what she calls her 'prison.' She then manages to free herself only to realize that the guests are rather few.
As her memory slowly returns, the magnitude of the situation begins to hit her. She is a zombie. And, funny enough, she believes that it is the luckiest she has ever been. She then sets off to find any remnant of a friendly face from her old life. However, in death she realizes and sees a new perspective to her old life. There are battles to face and truths to learn. Jen Frankel, through Sharon, takes us through all these realizations and battles inside The undead redhead.
The undead redhead tells a new, never-told-before zombie story. This is the main reason why I decided to accept to review it. It is a zombie story but without the 'brains' mantra that seems to dogg all other zombie stories. This is a tale of a real zombie (or how I would picture a zombie to be like) who is simply an undead human but with all the human qualities he/she possessed in life. In that regard, Jen Frankel did a good job. This is a rather creative and original idea.
The story takes a rather comical look at Sharon's life pre- and post-death. It highlights the more humorous aspects of being undead. The author managed to turn a rather serious, and gross, topic and make it hilarious through Sharon's musings and her unfounded optimism. It took the zing and the sting out of the fact that Sharon was undead and made me fall in love with the story and by a gross extension, Sharon herself.
Strangely enough, Sharon's coming back to life makes her grow more as a person (zombie?) than any other period in her life. She faces the truth of who she is (was) and comes in to terms with the fact that the relationships in her life were much more toxic than she ever cared to admit. This includes all types of her relationships from her parents, to her friends, to her boyfriend and even to herself. Her death was not a tragic shock to those closest to her, it was an inconvenience. This is the kind of character development that many authors can only dream about.
This is a no-brainer for me. Without any shadow of a doubt, I rate it 4 out of 4 stars. The plot line and the story was great and authentic and I did not detect any grammatical error whatsoever. It is a book that a wide variety of audiences will enjoy, including but not limited to lovers of authentic zombie novels and lovers of comical novels.
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Undead Redhead
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