This is a perfect example of having all the right ingredients but the mix failing to gel. Hutchinson, best-selling author of We Are The Ants, gives us the story of Dino, the gay son in a family of morticians who silently rebels against the expectation that he will join the business given his talent for applying make-up to corpses. As the novel begins, we learn that his former best friend July, with whom he had a falling-out a year before, has died of a brain aneurysm at age 17. The night before the funeral, Dino decides to work on her make-up and is shocked when she comes back to life. It is mentioned frequently that she isn’t a zombie but non-dead.
As Dino and July struggle to understand the reason for her resurrection and the concurrent worldwide suspension of death, the story gets bogged down with gross-out descriptions of decomposition, their toxic friendship and caustic humor, Dino’s confusion about his relationship with Rafi, his transgender boyfriend, and July’s unpleasant personality and insensitive jokes about the LGBTQ community. Comments like “I don’t tell you how to gay; don’t tell me how to act” and “I mean, what’s the point of being gay if you’re not going to be in theater” make the friendship between them seem really implausible.
The plot is solid enough to keep the momentum going, but the underdeveloped characters and their inability to honestly communicate the reasons and responsibilities for the dissolution of their long-time friendship make it a frustrating read. More focus on the development of the relationship between Dino and Rafi and an acknowledgment that sometimes, when people grow and change, friendships fall apart might have made the story more compelling. Although some younger teens would appreciate the disgusting zombie humor, I wouldn’t buy this for our school library.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Simon Pulse through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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