Married with Zombies by Jesse Petersen Book Review

Married with Zombies (Living with the Dead #1)

By: Jesse Petersen

Publisher: Orbit

Release Date: September 1, 2010

Genre/Age: Marketed for adults, but appropriate for older teens

Pages: 244

Source: Library

A heartwarming tale of terror in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.

Meet Sarah and David.

Once upon a time they met and fell in love. But now they’re on the verge of divorce and going to couples’ counseling. On a routine trip to their counselor, they notice a few odd things – the lack of cars on the highway, the missing security guard, and the fact that their counselor, Dr. Kelly, is ripping out her previous client’s throat.

Meet the Zombies.

Now, Sarah and David are fighting for survival in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. But, just because there are zombies, doesn’t mean your other problems go away. If the zombies don’t eat their brains, they might just kill each other.

I never thought I’d say this about a zombie novel, but Married with Zombies is such a fun, cute read. Probably the cutest book about zombies you’ll ever find. Jesse Petersen manages to blend all the elements of the story together seamlessly: the horror of friends and family being turned into zombies, the sniping of a couple whose marriage is on the rocks, the blood and gore of fighting zombies (the book was actually a lot more gruesome than I was expecting, which was probably just dumb on my part seeing as how I knew it was a zombie novel), as well as the humor that it is so important to find and maintain in such a tense situation as a zombie apocalypse.

I loved Sarah and David, and seeing the evolution of their relationship as they go from the brink of divorce to an awesomely snarky zombie-fighting team was wonderful. I especially like Sarah as a narrator; she is such a kickass female character and those are always such fun to read.

One of the only issues that I had with the book (other than the unexpectedness of some of the gore) is that it felt very much like the set-up of a story (which it is, as there are currently two more books in the series). And I understand that a lot of exposition and background needs to be taken care of at the start of a series, it’s just that the whole time I was reading I was kind of waiting to get into the “meat” of the story. Haha, sorry, very bad zombie pun there. The book is rubbing off on me, clearly. :P (As a side note, I’d just like to point out that as of the writing of this review I have actually read both the second and third books, and they definitely get more into the “meat” of the story, so even though that was one critique I had about this first one, if you think you might be interested in the series, please don’t let that put you off.)

The tagline on the back cover of the book is “a romantic comedy with… BRAAAINS” and this is such an accurate description. The fun back-and-forth between Sarah and David, the unexpected humor, even the zombies… it all made for such an entertaining read. I’m not a huge zombie person (I definitely avoided the TV show “The Walking Dead”), so I was surprised by how much I liked this book. I never would have expected it to be so fun, and I’m definitely looking forward to more from Jesse Petersen.