Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion

Pages: 239

Publisher: Vintage

Release Date: 31^st January 2013

Edition: UK paperback, movie cover, review copy

R is a zombie.

He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he is a little different from his fellow Dead.

And then he meets a girl.

First as his prisoner, then as his reluctant guest, Julie is a blast of colour in R’s grey landscape, and something inside him begins to bloom.

He doesn’t want to eat her, he wants to protect her. He wants to breathe again. He wants to live.

This unlikely bond will cause transformations they can’t imagine, but their hopeless world won’t change without a fight.

I had no idea what to expect from Warm Bodies other than awesomeness and yet it still managed to take me by surprise.

The tone and style of this novel is the best thing about it for me. I love the mixture of vast consciousness and breadth of thought compared to the basic restrictions of R’s zombie brain along with the visions that drove him on. It was a little bit mind-blowing in the contrast sometimes. The prose is so clever and unique and it felt like it had a sense of literary fiction to it. But in an accessible way, a way that just added to the charm of the novel.

R is a fantastic character and he wasn’t at all what I expected him to be. He’s so sweet and I love the way that he interacted with Julie. They are a brilliant pair. Julie is sassy, brave and completely bad-ass. My opinion of her only continued to rise once she was back in the Stadium after experiencing what she had.

The idea of the Stadium blew my mind: a miniature city housed in a former sports stadium where the remnants of human civilians tried to rebuild life. The whole story behind the breakdown of the world as we know it was really well done. Our information was drip-fed as R himself had no recollection of what had really happened and it seemed like a scarily realistic way for it to go. Well, until the zombies that is.

Warm Bodies ended with a strange and fascinating change in R and Julie’s world and I hope a sequel comes out soon.

Thank you to Vintage for sending me a copy for review.

Sophie