*FTC disclosure; I was given a free copy of this book by the publishers*

Nora Dearly returns home from her fancy private boarding school for the Christmas holidays, only to be attacked, and subsequently rescued, by zombies, including the remarkably alive-looking Captain Abraham (Bram) Griswold.

After a period of panic and worry, Nora decides to trust these undead soldiers, and Bram begins to explain why she was attacked, why she was rescued and the history of his undead army.

Nora’s decision to trust the zombies is very realistic. Too often, charaters in paranormal books scream in horror at the zombies/vampires/werewolves, then seem to shrug their shoulders and simply accept the existence of impossible monsters. Nora struggles with the news, and struggles to trust the zombies, even after she leaves the room she locked herself into, and decides to socialise with them.

The backstory of how this new world came about is told as Nora writes a history paper for school. Thanks to climate change, wars and mass migration, survivors set up in Central and South America, deeming their world New Victoria, and adopting the customs and morals of Victorian society.

Habel also answers every possible question about the zombies as Bram explains it all to Nora.

The balance between old and new, futuristic and Victorian, was a little skewed, particularly towards the end of the book, when it became easy to forget that this is a steampunk novel.

The novel is narrated by five different characters, though it is written in the first-person. Personally, I don’t like multiple POVs combined with first-person narration, as it’s too difficult to get right. Habel doesn’t get it right. The voices aren’t sufficiently unique, and even with the announcement at the start of each chapter of who often found myself wondering which uses on, I often found myself wondering which character was narrating.

Some characters added very little to the book. The chapters narrated by Pamela (Nora’s best friend, left behind in New London), for example, didn’t offer anything of benefit to the plot until three quarters of the way through the book. The book would have been much better if it had just been written from Bram and Nora’s points of view.

The romance between Bram and Nora is genuinely sweet and touching and romantic. Given that zombies only have about five years before they truly decompose (and Bram has already been undead for two years) it will be interesting to see how the relationship plays out over the course of the series.

The plot was incredulous. Madison, a spoiled brat, travels to Italy for a year and falls in love with coffee. She then decides to get an MBA and open an espresso shop, but it doesn’t occur to her that she may need to learn how to make coffee.

Her brother returns from a tour in Iraq and at his homecoming party, she comes on to his best friend, Gabe, a police officer. She turns her down, unable to think past the fact that she is his best friend’s sister.

Then, thanks to the Espresso Bandit, a thief who is targetting espresso shops, Gabe has to step in to protect Madison.

Madison, is thoroughly unlikeable. Materialistic, shallow, attention-seeking, self-centred, spoiled and stupid (who sets up a coffee business without knowing how to make coffee?), she is exactly the kind of person most of us would actively avoid if we met her.

The love interest, Gabe, though as flat and one-dimensional as all the other characters in this book, is a genuinely nice person, and rather than rooting for his romance and with Madison, the reader roots for him to realise how much better he can do.

There are some attempts at making the sex kinky, but they’re so tame and poorly written, I barely noticed the characters were having sex.

I often contemplated giving up on this book entirely, but struggled through because I wanted to see if it got better. It didn’t.

Don’t waste your time.

Let’s see. Wicklow-Cyprus-back to Wicklow-Connemara-Corofin-DCU-Corofin-DCU-Cavan-DCU-Cavan and now finally, back to Galway again.

Himself lost his job yesterday. He finishes up next Friday and because the house we live in belongs to his boss, we’re moving house.

But it’s fine. We’re happy. I’m relatively indifferent, seeing as I’m out of work. He’s happy because we both miss Galway and had plans to move back anyway. Him losing his job has simply forced our hands, and made us take the leap we’ve been talking about for months.

I have big plans for this year, so stay tuned.

Also, I apologise for the lack of multimedia in my posts. I blogged in December about my laptop meeting an untimely end, so I’m using the WordPress app and frankly it’s too fiddly to post pictures and videos in.

Normal service will resume as soon as I repair the screen on my laptop. And god knows when that might be.

Got some big plans for this year, stay tuned

Yadda yadda, blah blah. Plenty of time for all that later. In the meantime, pass the vodka!

It’s called My Fitness Pal, and it basically allows you to log your calorie intake and output, and log your weight. Sounds basic, but it’s so much more than that.

It allows you to scan the barcode of any food, and then add that food to your diary. For me, this is awesome, because one of the things I’ve dislikes about other apps is they have huge lists of foods which aren’t available here in Ireland, so my food diary and calorie count was always an approximation and was never entirely accurate.

One of the other things I like about it is the exercise log is very specific. Instead of adding “60 minutes weightlifting,” which really could mean anything, I can add each individual exercises, the weight I lifted and the number of reps. Awesomes.

If you have an iPhone, and one of your resolutions is to lose weight, or gain it, get this app!

On its birthday.

Thinking my laptop was closed on my bed, I threw a hairbrush onto the bed without looking, breaking the screen.

The glass itself is fine, there literally isn’t a scratch on it, but the liquid underneath is ruined. I’ll try and post a picture at some stage.

So, Irish readers, anyone got any suggestion about how much it will cost to fix my baby?

Check it out;

Not many people can say their entire existence has been one big lab experiment: poked and prodded by scientists, genetically modified to be the best and endure the worst, subjected to daily tests and trials that would kill a normal human. All Michaela wants is her own life, to be able to go to school, flirt with boys, maybe eat ice cream now and then. So when the chance to escape finally comes, Michaela and her sister grab it, taking their friends with them.

But they weren’t the only ones to find their way out of those labs. Following close behind are another breed of creature, one that doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong, who exist only to feed their own hunger. The appearance of a strange boy who seems too much like them to be a coincidence makes things even more confusing. But as the world begins to literally fall apart around them, Michaela must accept his help, especially when she could lose the very thing she holds dearest: her sister.

You can expect to see lots of posts about this book and the author over the next little while, because I’m very excited about it.

Add the book on GoodReads

Like Kate on Facebook

Follow Kate on Twitter

Become a fan on GoodReads

Check out Kate’s blog, where she recently started blogging about her self-publishing journey

And most of all, await the release of the book on February 28th with bated breath!

I’m not usually one for Taylor Swift, but this song is cool.

So, where in the movie will it be? DON’T READ ON IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

When Rue dies? When Peeta and Katniss are on the way home to District 12?

I cannot wait!