[Review] Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter

Title: Alice in Zombieland (White Rabbit Chronicles #1)
Author: Gena Showalter
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Genre: Zombies, Paranormal
Release Date: August 27, 2013
Source: Purchased
Purchase: Amazon | TBD | B&N | Kobo

She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.

Alice in Zombieland was my first Gena Showalter book and I absolutely loved it! At first, I fell in love with the cover. I thought that it was different and that intrigued me. I thought this was going to be more of a play on Alice in Wonderland, but it wasn't. (I think the only thing that really referenced the Wonderland version was the White Rabbit cloud.) Then, I started to read people's reviews on it and that's when I decided to buy the book. It had been sitting up on my shelf for a couple of months now and a few times I went to grab it to read and I had doubts. I was hoping that it wasn't going to be like every single zombie flick and story out there where all they wanted to do was feast on your brains while they walked around brain-dead. But this was anything but.

Alice Bell (or Ali she prefers) was not like normal kids. She had a father whom she thought was a raving drunk lunatic, a mother who constantly forgot things like her kids birthdays, and a little sister who just wanted to be normal just as badly as Ali.  Then one night, Ali had managed to talk her parents into leaving the confines of their safe house at night to watch Emma perform in her ballet recital. That's when things went horribly wrong and she lost the ones she loved.

Ali is a very strong willed and determined teenager. After the death of her family she kept herself bottled up from her grandparents and tried to live a normal every day life. She made friends pretty easily and enemies. I really enjoyed Ali's stubbornness, mainly because I saw a lot of myself in her. But at the same time, I just wished that she wouldn't have kept the people that cared for her at arms length and that part was kinda irritating.

Kat and Frosty were a very interesting couple with their on again and off again relationship. Kat was the life of the party and very comical while Frosty was very possessive and jealous. There was never a dull moments between the two of them.

Cole was just, what can I say, gorgeous! When I read about him I instantly thought of a younger Vin Diesel with black hair and violet eyes (maybe something similar to his eyes from Pitch Black?). I could also easily picture Vin Diesel because of his hardcore attitude that he portrays in almost everyone of his movies. I really enjoyed how he was very protective over Ali even though they had just met and he stayed that way throughout the whole book. There was nothing wishy-washy about him.

As for the story as a whole, it was definitely different then any zombie book I have read. (Which I don't read many.) I liked the fact that the zombies weren't just dead, but they were like spirits that only certain "special" people could see. To me it was like Resident Evil (because of the hazmet people) meets The Matrix (because of the special moves) meets Buffy (because of the gang of friends). That would be the best way I could put it.

Because of some very mild sexual conduct (mainly because of the descriptive kissing scenes) I would recommend this to anyone 15 and older.