WANTED. Five girls. Must be able to sing, dance, and kill zombies.
Five unknown students are desperate to change their lives.
They know they have what it takes to become one of the Deadly Divas.
Now they just have to prove it to what's left of the world.
I received this book for free from Author Gifted in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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What happens when the world has been overrun by Zombies and you are running out of soldiers? Why you start a band with five young girls to create propaganda. Obviously not everything is as it seems, and when your life relies on fighting, you do whatever it takes to keep alive.
The world is not the way we know it. With a wall separating the living from the reliving..undeadish. For whatever reason when someone dies they come back for their second life or as Zombies. A draft occurs for those men and women who are of a certain age. Not much different then the Hunger Games “drafts” their teenagers. When one becomes an adult, enlistment is optional, with a draft if needed. The procedures after that is simple; a gun, an elevator, and lowered to the deaths. In fact from the sounds of it, only a handful of people have survived the elevator down to tell their tales.
With enlisting numbers down and the undead rising against the wall, literally, the heads of the city must find a way to increase the soldier base. Their plan to get teenagers to join is to have a five woman rock band who sing songs of pride and propaganda. The auditions bring out the best, and the worst of what the city has to offer. The book progresses from the initial auditions to the first concert. Obviously the story is not over because it is part of a series, but it could have been. This book really hits on the devaluation of human life.
The story follows the tale of five girls, spoiler alert, the five that make it to the band. Yeah I know I don’t do spoilers but it is pretty much the entire book. It jumps from one character to another with minimal overlapping in story. This is good because some books like this can be horrid. When you have multiple stories, some authors want to show a plot from all angles, therefore repeating scenes ad nauseam. Thankfully this author did not go down that specific black hole.
The book has all the main teenage types; the outsider, the follower, the Queen B. All the things that a good book needs. There is a hint of romance, but it is tertiary to the story line which is about a city using young women to further an agenda. It really does look at what could happen, and what does happen with the exploitation of young singers and actors. Just this has a Zombie twist.
The author did a good job channeling teenage girl, with all of their hormones, cattyness, and needs. You have the lipstick. You have the diva behavior. Having a soon to be teenager, I shudder at how some of the things are already happening. Between that and the societal issues that the author touches on, this book, and hopefully the series is a good reflection of our life.
About Faith McKay
Faith McKay is the author of LIPSTICK & ZOMBIES and PROPHECY GIRL. She lives to write and only has bad days when she forgets that fact. When she’s not writing she can be found enjoying horror and comedy with equal abandon. When she’s found a good horror comedy you can hear her shouting things like “Ha! Right in the eye!” while giggling uncontrollably.
She grows a little weirder every day.
