Reviews

Creepy and disturbing, but mostly just really really sad.

Some hella real feels for a book that's about undead monsters who claw the spines out of people and eat their bones.

howlinglibraries's review

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5.0

I'll try my best to do this book justice with a review, but it isn't every day that you find a new favorite zombie book of all time.

Every day has its destiny. The cracking icicle that's almost ready to fall. A branch weighed by too much snow, soon to break. Clouds that try and try to hold in their water, only to fail, and in doing so fulfill their meaning in the world. An architecture of inevitability, that this was fated to be. The destiny of this day: Bloodshed. It would begin with a single drop.

Where the Dead Go to Die is a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse that I've never seen before. In a future where the zombie infection takes months, sometimes even years to change a person into the inevitable, government agencies set up hospice centers to allow the would-be walking dead a safe place to be taken care of while they live out their final days in some semblance of dignity and calm.

The book follows a young mother named Emily who's starting her new job as a nurse at one of these hospice centers, and throughout it, we get the chance to grow attached not only to her and her daughter Lucette, but also a wide panel of side characters who are human, flawed, and impossible not to empathize with. Dries and Gunnells are masters at developing these characters until they feel like they could walk right off the pages, which means it hurts that much more whenever any terrible fate befalls one of them.

Where the Dead Go to Die is perhaps the first piece of zombie media of any form to break my heart so thoroughly; if you need proof, I'm fighting tears just typing this review, thinking about some of the characters and how much better they deserved. I adore horror stories that can cut to the heart of me and this one didn't let me down. I feel like I'm going to mourn this story for a long time, and for me, that's a mark of a genuinely memorable read.

I can't wait to read more by both of these authors and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It takes place around the holidays, but you could easily read it at any time of year. Whether you typically enjoy zombie tales or not, I highly suggest picking this up if you like emotional horror stories with a lot of heart. 5 stars, easy. Thanks for the heartache, Dries and Gunnells. 💔

✨ Representation: one Black side character, one queer side character

maritza_reads's review

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Wowwww I hadn’t heard anyone talking about this book and I am so glad I picked it up. This is a meta horror with strong fmc and other female side characters. I love when male authors make the women strong, rather than a “damsel in distress.”

This book explores how people treat the sick, community biases for transmissible diseases, betrayal, extremist and hatred, conformity, and most of all family. Fuck I loved this book so much.

Yes we are reading about existing with zombies 10 years after the fact, but this book goes into so much more in under 230 pages.

sarenaspookyreads's review

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dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This book ended up being way better than I anticipated! I wanted something to read that took place around the holidays, so I thought to give this one a chance. I was not disappointed! The world is obviously a dystopian one, but has a twist on typical zombie stories. The ending was so good too! I would definitely recommend this one.

viktoria_rosalynn's review

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challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

wellreadintrovert's review

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3.0

I jumped at a Christmas zombie horror read. But while it had all of those things, there was a lot of sadness and bleakness that dropped it down a little to make it not a standout for me. Check any content warnings you may need as there may be some that effects you in relation to children.

dananoel's review

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did not finish. I liked the first 40 some pages. But then I hit a brick wall and fella sleep.

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