Jen's Review: "Road Trip of the Living Dead" by Mark Henry

Amanda Feral, our zombie heroine, is going on a road trip from Seattle to South Dakota to have closure with her mother who is dying. But she and her friends (including another zombie, a vampire and ghost) end up on the run from an angry vampire and his werewolf goons, picking up a couple humans and encountering a plethora of paranormal beings.

I was excited to have the opportunity to get an advance copy of this book when Mark and I were setting up his promo on the blog. Urban Fantasy is right up the alley of books I enjoy reading. But unfortunately I had trouble getting through the book, only finishing it last night.

Don't get me wrong, the book wasn't bad... in fact, I found the premise intriguing. Just something about it didn't agree with me. Part of it could be the language and a lot of it was the gore. And I found the footnotes (yes, footnotes in fiction) to be overused and often distracting. But I think the turn off for me was Amanda. I have to like the main characters in the book to enjoy it and more often than not I couldn't like Amanda. I didn't enjoy her sense of humor and snarkiness. And that made for a rough read.

This is the second book of Amanda's memoirs, following Happy Hour of the Damned. I admit that I felt like I was always a step behind because I haven't read the first book in the series... and recommend that if you're going to try these books, going in order is probably the way to go.