Working Stiff (Revivalist, #1)
Author: Rachel Caine
Publication Date: 8/2/11
Publisher: Roc

Blurb (GR): Bryn Davis knows working at Fairview Mortuary isn't the most glamorous career choice, but at least it offers stable employment--until she discovers her bosses using a drug that resurrects the clientele as part of an extortion racket. Now, Bryn faces being terminated--literally, and with extreme prejudice.

Wit the help of corporate double-agent Patrick McCallister, Bryn has a chance to take down the bigger problem--pharmaceutical company Pharmadene, which treats death as the ultimate corporate loyalty program. She'd better do it fast, before she becomes a zombie slave--a real working stiff. She'd be better off dead...

Review:
There are some kindred spirits working at TNT/TBS/USA who choose which movies to show regularly on the weekends. It's like they somehow know that I will ALWAYS watch Overboard, What About Bob?, Hook, Father of the Bride, and about a billion other movies--and there must be tons more people just like me that regularly think about dressing up as Bob Wiley for Halloween every year because why else would they be showing the same movies unless people are watching them?  Death Becomes Her, which you may or may not remember as MY FAVORITE MERYL STREEP MOVIE EVER EVEN INCLUDING HER MANY AWARD-WINNING PERFORMANCES, is always on basic cable on the weekends...and I pretty much know it by heart. It is just so bizarre, I mean, Bruce Willis, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Isabella Rossellini in a movie about two women dueling over a balding mortician and then taking a potion to life forever? That's pure cinematic gold. I saw Rachel Caine at an event last weekend and you can't really tell by looking at someone but I'm pretty sure she also likes Death Becomes Her. Evidence:

_I haven't fully signed on for the new zombie love story trend in books and I'm sure many people would try to argue with me about the main character in this book not being a zombie, so here's a quick two-question quiz to find out if you are a zombie:

Question 1: Did you die at some point? If yes, move on to question 2. If no, congratulations! You are alive!
Question 2: Are you somehow still walking around and "living" to a varying degree? If yes, congratulations (?), you are a zombie!

Some people might say that you need to be craving brains to be a zombie. Then again, some people think bands like Nickelback and Creed make good music. Bryn, the MC of this book, dies and is subsequently revived by a chemical compound that must be taken daily to maintain her zombie, oops, I mean revived person's body. I know what you're thinking here--that's hot. You totally would be attracted to an animated, walking, talking, thinking corpse, right? Wait...something's not right here. We had a discussion at book club about whether or not the romantic element in this book was off-putting and it totally was to me BUT it is mostly for one reason and surprisingly, it isn't because Bryn is revived. Patrick sees her die. He sees her as a dead body. He sees her beat up, shot, and basically mangled and then sees her tissue regrowing in front of him. Um, that's gross. That is a constant reminder that the person you are looking at is artificially alive. Necrophilia is so in right now. I couldn't truly get on board with it in this particular book but she does basically live a normal life so I'm not ruling out romance with some future guy who doesn't know she's dead (SPOILER ALERT FOR HIM! "Hey, I've been meaning to tell you...I can't have kids." "Oh, is it something genetic?" "Meh, actually I'm a reanimated corpse. No biggie.")

Overall, the mystery and intrigue were entertaining and the series started off with enough world-building and quirky characters that I'll come back for more. (*cough*some of the side characters are more interesting than the main girl*cough*) Since Bryn was in the military, I expected much more badassery to be happening but she gets punched out pretty regularly. Perhaps she'll really come into her zombie self in future Revivalist series books? Until then, you can most likely find me watching What About Bob? on repeat...

3/5 stars

Feed (Newsflesh, #1)
Author: Mira Grant
Publication Date: 5/1/10
Publisher: Orbit

Blurb (www.miragrant.com, via GR):
In 2014, two experimental viruses—a genetically engineered flu strain designed by Dr. Alexander Kellis, intended to act as a cure for the common cold, and a cancer-killing strain of Marburg, known as "Marburg Amberlee"—escaped the lab and combined to form a single airborne pathogen that swept around the world in a matter of days. It cured cancer. It stopped a thousand cold and flu viruses in their tracks.

It raised the dead.

Millions died in the chaos that followed. The summer of 2014 was dubbed "The Rising," and only the lessons learned from a thousand zombie movies allowed mankind to survive. Even then, the world was changed forever. The mainstream media fell, Internet news acquired an undeniable new legitimacy, and the CDC rose to a new level of power.

Set twenty years after the Rising, the Newsflesh trilogy follows a team of bloggers, led by Georgia and Shaun Mason, as they search for the brutal truths behind the infection. Danger, deceit, and betrayal lurk around every corner, as does the hardest question of them all:

When will you rise?

Review:

I think my Venn diagram says it all. What? It doesn't? Well, alright then. This book was a real roller coaster for me. I attempted to read a library copy in December and I just couldn't make it through. THE POLITICS. THE BLOGGING. There are several sections of Feed that really slow down the pacing. At points, I felt like I was running around an empty track. At others, someone had tied concrete blocks to my feet and I was running in quicksand. I am so happy that I finished it my second time through, though I have to admit that my motivation to do so was increased by 1) the fact that I was reading with a friend and 2) several of my Goodreads friends sing this book's praises.

The ultimate strength of this novel is in the characters. Adopted brother and sister, Georgia and Shaun, hold the entire story together with their bond. I grew to really enjoy some of the side characters as well, though it was clear to me who was up to no good before their big reveals.

I think the reason I didn't love this as much as some of my friends is that I felt it could've been at least 100 pages shorter than it was. The beginning solidified Georgia and Shaun's familial situation and their friendship with Buffy, as well as the entire world they were living in and the blogging atmosphere. I was hooked. The ending was just fantastic. It was the middle that was rough going and it makes me nervous to start the second Newsflesh book--will it be a blog slog again?