Bella Street Romance Goes Retro

It's that time of year when the leaves begin to turn, when there's a brisk chill in the air...when there's a faint coppery tinge of blood, rotting flesh, and dystopian drama. That means it's zombie time. Sometimes zombies are cute.    But more often zombies are brain-munching fiends. And attempts to survive them can be even messier. There are plenty of stories to keep you looking over your shoulder when the zombie apocalypse is nigh. If you enjoy dark zombie apocalypse tales in the vein of Forest of Hands and Teeth and Enclave ... then check out new author Emily Shore 's zombacalypse take in Flesher .  Ashleigh Starr, known as Ash to all but one, carries a dark secret, punishable by a fate worse than death. In an apocalyptic world where humanity has been invaded by a new virus for years, Ash bears the burden of a forbidden love on her shoulders, the forbidden love of one of the Infected, those her people call t...

The title of this book immediately caught my attention and I ended up reading it in one day, which I never get to do. I have a To Be Read pile that's nearly a hundred books strong. This one grabbed me right from the start...not unlike one of the zombies that populate the novel. As a HUGE zombie fan, I found the opening of the book lyrically-written, beautifully described, and with a fresh twist on the zombie meme. And as a HUGE zombie fan, I hold to the classic view of what zombies symbolize, which is death. That said, The Forest of Hands and Teeth was a great metaphor for life and death, free will and fate, and wondering of what path we take, what choices we make, will give us a different outcome. However by the time I was two-thirds of the way through the book, I no longer cared about those choices. Mary, initially a fierce, determined protagonist, becomes mercurial in her desires. She has cravings, then once those cravings are fulfilled, she casts the object of her desire...