Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Feb 01, 2013 Kaity rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, dystopia, zombies

The beginning of Marion's Warm Bodies is incredibly funny if you enjoy slightly geeky zombie jokes. I found them to be clever and used at opportune times but they are cheesy. I wasn't expecting R to be quite this clever, what with being a zombie and all. However, his offbeat personality worked really well for me and I thought it was a great way to make a zombie book unique as opposed to the over-the-top humor of classics gone zombie or complete gorefests like Walking Dead.

"Sometimes I wonder if The beginning of Marion's Warm Bodies is incredibly funny if you enjoy slightly geeky zombie jokes. I found them to be clever and used at opportune times but they are cheesy. I wasn't expecting R to be quite this clever, what with being a zombie and all. However, his offbeat personality worked really well for me and I thought it was a great way to make a zombie book unique as opposed to the over-the-top humor of classics gone zombie or complete gorefests like Walking Dead.

"Sometimes I wonder if he has a philosophy. Maybe even a worldview. I’d like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bite somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts."

I didn't like the addition of Perry's character. I understand Perry's existence was necessary to the story for how R could save Julie, grow emotionally and come to love her, and eventually become more than Dead but I felt like he damped my enjoyment of the story. Warm Bodies has chunks of his memories and, while reading them, I found myself caring less for R. If the memories had started later in the story it probably would have worked better for me because the Perry memories damaged my connection to R really early on and I never truly cared for him after that. Later on Julie confesses to R some of the bad things Perry has done but all it did was make me dislike Perry, my attitude towards R unchanged. The memories of Perry continued on throughout the novel and soon dream conversations between R and Perry began too.

Violence, language, sex etc in books doesn't bother me and I felt it was generally well used in Warm Bodies. How can you have a zombie book without violence? That said, I do feel it's necessary to mention in my review of Warm Bodies that it had way more of that type content than I expected if you're going to consider it a young adult novel. I did some looking around and many websites seem to classify it as one and based on the film trailer I has assumed it was a YA novel. Atria is considered an adult imprint as far as I'm aware though. The romance between R and Julie portion of Warm Bodies is suited to a young adult novel. I'll let you decide on the rest though... The quote below isn't necessarily the 'most adult' moment, it was simply the one where I really made myself check to see what genre this book was written under.

"It’s still night, and I can hear my wife having sex with her new lover behind the door of a nearby staff room. I try to ignore them. I already walked in on them once today. I heard noises, the door was wide open, so I walked in. There they were, naked, awkwardly slamming their bodies together, grunting and groping each other’s pale flesh. He was limp. She was dry."

I enjoyed the story line for Warm Bodies but I don't think I ever really grew to feel anything for its characters. I will definitely be reading The New Hunger, a prequel novella, as soon as I can though. I'm very intriguing to find out more about R before the events of Warm Bodies.

Boarded Window, a short story available online through City Arts Online, added some extra information about R. It's too short to review on its own though. Boarded Window talked about memories, R's first winter, becoming a zombie etc. Warm Bodies didn't answer much of anything about R's human life or how he came to be so I enjoyed the brief glimpse Boarded Window brought.

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May 28, 2012 Carolynn (Molly.Groot) Evans rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites-read-over-over

Unusual read... I gobbled it up. It was a fascinating character assessment. Change truly can come from within, to ripple through the world with-out. It is a book to gnaw on, absorb, take into oneself.

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May 08, 2012 PJ rated it liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, romance-paranormal, 2012-books-i-ve-read, ya-dystopian-post-apocalyptic

Although I gave this 3.5 stars, I really do recommend this to any Twilight fans. It is a tale of redemption and a love story written from a zombie's POV. A zombie named R who lives with a small hive of other zombies at an airport. He's different though. He loves Frank Sinatra records and collects human artifacts and decorates the 747 where he "lives" with them. He wants something more than feeding on humans and endlessly riding the escalators as if he has somewhere important to go. And then one ...more

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Oct 21, 2010 Marla rated it liked it

Shelves: dystopia, romance, zz-2012, with-reservations, challenged, young-adult, paranormal, zombies, horror, new-adult

3.5 stars. Strange tale about a sensitive zombie who wants to be more. R saves Julie after killing her boyfriend and brings her back to their lair/zombie commune for reasons unknown to either of them.

Likes:
* Read this before I heard the movie was coming out. I think this will be a rare case when I will like the movie more than the book.
(view spoiler) 3.5 stars. Strange tale about a sensitive zombie who wants to be more. R saves Julie after killing her boyfriend and brings her back to their lair/zombie commune for reasons unknown to either of them.

Likes:
* Read this before I heard the movie was coming out. I think this will be a rare case when I will like the movie more than the book.
(view spoiler)

Dislikes:
* Too slow and philosophical for my taste in zombie stories, but if I had expected a different story, I might have been more apt to like it. I am also reading 4 slow books at the same time, so I have no escape...and reading is usually my escape.
* Maybe I am just lazy, but some of the hints of things, but left unsaid were confusing and unsatisfying...I didn't plan to have to think this much for a zombie book and I wanted more answers and less mystery
(view spoiler)

With-reservatioons:
some language, sex or sexual situations, violence and gore

...more

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Oct 08, 2010 Samantha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, happy-i-read

I really liked this one. The characters were refreshing and came to life on the pages. The plot was intriguing and kept me riveted. So many of the thoughts and ideas were put forth in relatable and imaginative ways and I could probably fill the rest of my review with some of the great quotes, but I'll just let you read them instead. The last parts did begin to drag a tad and if I'm honest the questions and comments about 'society' and 'civilization' started to wilt a little under the weight of t ...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, 2013

I pretty much only read this because I saw the movie and liked it. I thought the book was good; it wasn't crazy good or anything, but it wasn't bad either. It was an interesting take on "Romeo and Juliet" (got some serious connections to that play; the balcony scene was the most obvious one) and zombies as well. The ending felt a little rushed though. Overall, it was a good story. ...more

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