Synopsis: After his sister was murdered, Shaun now hallucinates her speaking to him constantly. He drives around a post-zombie-apocalypse US with his friends, making “witty banter” and trying to uncover a big government conspiracy to keep the populace timid and afraid.
Brief Book Review: Not much to like here. A longer review/FAQ here.
Club Review: It’s actually not terrible for a book club book. It’s rather long, but as mentioned in the FAQ, it’s very easy to skim. It’s much like a popcorn movie, you don’t have to put in much effort. It may make for a decent break between more demanding books. There are several really good scenes, but like most good scenes they don’t really provoke much discussion. There is a LOT to complain about, and if you like going MST3K on a book, this can provide for a fair bit of fun. The problem is that there isn’t much variety to the fun, as the same annoying items keep coming up over and over and you can’t really mock them more than once or twice. It is not nearly the beautiful MST3K-feast that something truly awful would be. It’s uniformly middlin’ bad, with some good bits here and there which don’t quite make up for it. It’s too bad this book isn’t worse, or better, or shorter (seriously, an editor would have made this a much better novel). If it was any of those it’d be easy to give it a mild recommendation, but it’s hard to slog through 600 pages of mediocre writing and repetitive snarky quips just for some exasperated venting.
I will note that several people actually gave it fairly decent ratings, despite it’s flaws. They felt it was light and fun enough that it wasn’t a loss.
Summary: Not worth it. It ends on a cliff hanger and I don’t care. I wouldn’t recommend it for book clubs, but not terrible.