Review | My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

My Life as a White Trash Zombie

by Diana Rowland

My Rating:

Angel Crawford is a loser.

Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.

That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in an horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue—and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.

Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey—just when she's hungriest!

Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat.

Literally. 

I started reading this book by accident. I first stumbled across this series during Top Ten Tuesday when I saw How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back on another blog and was immediately intrigued. I'm not the biggest fan of zombies; zombie films tend to creep me out more than anything (even Shaun of the Dead!) and for whatever reason I just don't find myself picking up a lot of zombie fiction because it all seems very samey to me. Apart from Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy, of course, which I adore with all my being.

My Life as a White Trash Zombie stood out to me because it's more along the lines of Warm Bodies than The Walking Dead. Yes, zombies are technically dead and yes, they eat brains to stay alive, but when they're alive they're alive. They're real people with feelings, and I loved this different way of looking at zombies that didn't involve groaning, grunting corpses.

Angel is the kind of heroine I never knew I needed in my life. I'm always ready for new heroines that aren't presented in the usual way heroines are in urban fantasy; if I'd known Angel in school I probably wouldn't have liked her very much at all, but Rowland writes an engaging, endearing and funny protagonist whom I knew I was going to love as soon as I started reading. She's honest and unfortunate and ultimately good, and I think she may be a new addition to my list of favourite heroines.

Basically this book was just what I needed to read, because I was headed for a reading slump until I cracked it open, and I've already ordered the next three books in the series so far - I can't wait to see what Angel gets up to next, and I'm so pleased that this book I picked up on a whim has introduced me to a new series!