Alice In Zombieland by Gena Showalter

She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.

Hardcover, 404 pages Published September 25th 2012 by Harlequin Teen ISBN 0373210582 (ISBN13: 9780373210589)

 Alice's dad has always been a drunk, paranoid man. Her mother, a detached and forgetful woman, but very supportive of her husband. They only had 1 rule, don't stay out after dark. When Alice guilt-trip's them into going to her younger sister's dance recital for Alice's birthday. Everything goes wrong and the family is murdered. Alice moves in with her grandparents and attends her parent's old school where she learns more about the creatures that her father was so scared of. She then decides to take revenge on them for killing her family.

I did expect that this book was going to take a completely different track than it did. In a huge way I was hoping that it was a re-telling, or re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland. But besides the main character being name Alice, it really has no comparison. 

 I wasn't a fan of this version of a “zombie” and especially the practice in which they had to “fight” the zombies. It took a religious angle to it that I wasn't sure that I was expecting. The focused audience for this one should love romance, and not be looking for a horror story. 

When Alice begins to train and joins a group the fights the Zombies she shows great strength and she is a smart character. There is a huge focus on the romance aspect of the story and the term "Zombie" does not even seem the right word for these things that are endangering this group. I have several things I would name them, but as I would consider it a huge spoiler, I am going to refrain.

I was deeply disappointed to learn that this was not a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but I still kept my hopes up that I'd end up with a great kick ass heroine battling for revenge. But the whole back story of the "zombies" and how they must be fought and the people involved on both sides of this battle was even more of a bust for me. This story turned out nothing like I thought I was going to get.