Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Title: Warm Bodies

Author: Isaac Marion

Published: November 11, 2011 by Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Book Description:

R is a young man with an existential crisis--he is a zombie. He shuffles through an America destroyed by war, social collapse, and the mindless hunger of his undead comrades, but he craves something more than blood and brains. He can speak just a few grunted syllables, but his inner life is deep, full of wonder and longing. He has no memories, noidentity, and no pulse, but he has dreams.After experiencing a teenage boy's memories while consuming his brain, R makes an unexpected choice that begins a tense, awkward, and stragely sweet relationship with the victim's human girlfriend. Julie is a blast of color in the otherwise dreary and gray landscape that surrounds R. His decision to protect her will transform not only R, but his fellow Dead, and perhaps their whole lifeless world.

My thoughts:

One of the unplanned book purchases this year but I can't resist buying it after watching the movie. So yeah that is the backstory.

Reading this book after watching the film opened my eye again that the book is really better. It was almost 70% different than the movie. The core of the story is still their when you watch it, but if you want to know the full details of the story, I recomment 100% that you read this.

First off, the book is told through R's POV. And for me that is the biggest selling point of this book. The style of writing utilized by author is somewhat "high-language style". I don't know the proper term for it, but I got the feeling of like reading poetry. Full of ideas, romantic even. Every idea that R tells is very compound. Now don't get me wrong and don't be turned off just because you have an idea that it is not an easy read and you won't easily understand it, NO. That is my conflict, I describe R's thoughts as compound but I still easily understood what he is trying to convey.

Also, I like the progression of R all throughout the book. I feel like he is one of the most well written characters I have read. On the other hand, Julie just fell on the average line for me.

Pacing is good too for me, although (there's a possibility) you can find it a little bit boring because for the majority of the book is just R thinking. All of it is just in his mind. There are still conversation but majority of it are thoughts.

If you are wanting some action-packed scenes, no there's almost none, not until the last chapters but even then it's not much. This is still a romance story. A romance between the zombie R and the human girl Julie so expect that the focus is in their story. Fortunately, I think, there are no cheesy-cringe moments. (Or I might have forgotten) But I'm sure there's none.

But, even though I cited some of the things that you might not like in the book, for me, I still love reading this book. In fact, I finished it within 2 days I think because I still have classes that time. If not for the class I could have finished it in one day.

I give this an easy 5 whales, because I really like the writing style and the over-all story.