Zombie Blondes

Summary:
Any good zombie story or movie is always a reflection of American culture. Brian James keeps that in mind with his book Zombie Blondes. James takes the living-dead theme and applies it to a small-town high school, asking what would happen if a school were secretly controlled by zombies. The result isn’t as ridiculous as one might expect. Zombie Blondes turns out to be as much about fitting in, making friends, and being popular in a new school as it is about being chased by brain-eating ghouls.
Hannah’s dad is a former cop, but he snitched on another cop a few years back. That means that wherever Hannah and her dad move, trouble will follow. Hannah has moved from small town to small town, always the new kid in school. But when she arrives in Maplecrest, something seems different about this town. There are too many “For Sale” signs in the yards for one thing. There’s also a group of cheerleaders who rule the school who are just a little too pretty, a little too pale, and a little too perfect.
Hannah doesn’t fit in at all, and the cheerleaders (called the Death Squad) hate her. Plus, Lukas, the only kid who has been nice to her, keeps insisting that the town is overrun by zombies and the cheerleaders are keeping everyone brainwashed. But when the Death Squad girls change their mind and ask Hannah to join, she finds that the strange things are just beginning.
Faced with a choice between becoming popular (and possibly undead) and staying true to herself and her only real friend, Hannah gets more than she bargained for. After a slowly-building first half full of creepy atmosphere and disturbing hints, the action picks up as Hannah learns the truth about Maplecrest and its perfect little cheerleaders.

Review: The cover of this book instantly caught my eye with its creepy Barbie-doll image and catchy title. Of course, I’ll read anything with “Zombies” in the title. I was surprised to find that this book wasn’t full of blood and guts, although there is some of that, too. Applying the zombie theme to a high school setting reveals some interesting things about teenagers. Are kids raised on MTV, the Internet, and video games like a bunch of zombies? Don’t they all act, talk, and dress the same way? Are they just brain-dead slaves of popular culture? Doesn’t the media just brainwash kids by telling them what’s cool and how to act?
And what about issues of popularity and fitting in? Hannah feels so isolated when she moves to town that she would do almost anything to be one of the cool girls. I like this book because even though we can guess that the cheerleaders are really zombies who stay pretty by drinking blood, the first half starts out slowly and mysteriously. Hannah senses that something is weird, but she’s so worried about not having friends and how she looks to everyone else that she ignores the warning signs. Once she is invited to join the squad, Hannah treats her friend Lukas like crap even though she knows that he is her real friend and these girls might turn her into a monster. Sometimes being a teenager makes you do crazy things.
I also enjoyed the author’s style. Brian James is a grown man, but he writes like a sarcastic 16-year old who is tired of being the new kid in town. Hannah says, "I can usually pick out the popular kids soon after setting foot into a new school. The girls, anyway. They wear popularity like a uniform for everyone to see. From their hairstyles to their expensive shoes. Everything about them is torn from the glossy pages of the latest teen fashion magazines. Everything about them is perfect. At least on the outside, anyway." James uses short, choppy sentences to sound like Hannah might be complaining to the reader during lunch. Even though the ending is a little predictable (hint, what happens to the characters in most zombie movies?), the thing that kept me reading was Hannah’s voice. She explains her internal struggles of choosing popularity over friends in a way that sounds convincing. And that might be the scariest thing of all.