This review is going to need not one, not two, but 3 disclaimers before you read the review and I apologize for all of that. First off the amazing author who has put this out is Patrick Frievald and he is a friend, reviewer and occasional post writer for Buy Zombie. After that the book is published by JournalStone which *looks immediately to the advertisement on the right* is one of our sponsors. To offset that third part is that I don’t tend to enjoy novels focused on teens.
Patrick weaves us a tale focused around Ani Romero (yes the name is a tribute to George) who is a sixteen year old girl who has to deal with being a social outcast that hangs with the emo crowd. She used to be popular and is still friends with the football star at the school though while she longs for more it is casual at best. Out of luck in love Mike (the football star) is dating a nearly psychotic girl whose purpose for living appears to be attempting to ruin Ani’s social life. She has a dead end part time job after school dealing with people she can’t stand. To top it off her mother is an ex-researched turned school nurse who keeps her life in check with rules that can never be broken. Why can’t they be broken? Well step out of the teen angst right here because Ani has a real problem – she’s a zombie.
In Ani’s world the zombie outbreak came and mostly went. If people are infected they tend to turn quickly and become the standard zombie we all know and love. Ani is different. She was a carrier of the virus from birth to 14 years and never turned. Her mother was one of the top zombie researchers in the world and when they discovered she was turning her mother already had a formula created. It wasn’t a cure but it was able to prevent rot from setting in and kept her intelligent. She also created a rejuvenating formula to keep her daughter’s injuries healed.
School during the day, work after and a rejuvenating bath each night is the typical day with occasional weekend days out with friends. Vacations in her world consisted of a week of being experimented on by her mother in an attempt to find a cure. Not your typical teenage life.
Still while her condition is stabilized no one else can know about her being undead. The US government would sweep in, quarantine the town, and burn her alive to remove the infection as they would refer to her as. So what happens when a boy she isn’t interested in develops a crush on her? What more what happens when he starts paying too close attention to how she lives… or unlives?
Twice Shy is an interesting take on how a teenager who has to live with being a zombie goes on. It has a great view on relationships at that age. The ending of Twice Shy is to die for and done in a way that is so perfectly reading that I actually didn’t see it coming!
Available at Amazon
