I think I’ve conveyed how silly the distinction is. And, of course, the zombie ghosts can bite you and infect you which actually makes them zombies. Except that the zombies aren’t zombies, they are ghosts, despite the fact that the author insists on more than one occasion that ghosts don’t exist. Ultimately, Alice in Zombieland is just an average high school melodrama with stereotyped characters and a zombie threat. It is safe to say that I had high expectations of her with this book. The supernatural world that Showalter created in those books along with her characters’ natures and abilities was incredibly entertaining, unique and interesting. It is probably worth mentioning that I am a great fan of Showalter’s Intertwined series to the extent that it is the first series in years that I have read several times. However, therein lies the problem with Alice in Zombieland. This suited me perfectly as there is a time and place for parody mashups but I think Gena Showalter is a better writer than that. In a sense, this might be misleading to readers as the front cover proclaims “Off with their heads” and the series is called The White Rabbit Chronicles but apart from Alice’s sightings of a white cloud in the shape of a rabbit, further references to Alice in Wonderland are extremely tenuous. Despite the play on the title of the Lewis Carroll classic, the book has little to do with Alice in Wonderland and it is not a reimagining of that story. It is bad enough that Alice loses her entire family in a car accident on her sixteenth birthday but on that evening she finally sees the monsters with her own eyes and she realises once and for all that her father was anything but crazy.Īlice in Zombieland is Gena Showalter’s latest foray into young adult fiction, following on from her as-yet-unfinished Intertwined series. Except that he wasn’t delusional and monsters are real.

Her whole life her family was held captive by her father’s paranoid ramblings about monsters, never allowed to go out at night and living in a highly secure but permanent state of fear. Alice Bell has never experienced what you’d call a normal life.

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter