Katie is driving to work one beautiful day when a dead man jumps into her car and tries to eat her. That same morning, Jenni opens a bedroom door to find her husband devouring their toddler son.
Fate puts Jenni and Katie—total strangers—together in a pickup, fleeing the suddenly zombie-filled streets of the Texas city in which they live. Before the sun has set, they have become more than just friends and allies—they are bonded as tightly as any two people who have been to war together.
During their cross-Texas odyssey to find and rescue Jenni’s oldest son, Jenni discovers the joy of watching a zombie’s head explode when she shoots its brains out. Katie learns that she’s a terrific tactician—and a pretty good shot.
A chance encounter puts them on the road to an isolated, fortified town, besieged by zombies, where fewer than one hundred people cling to the shreds of civilization.
It looks like the end of the world. But Katie and Jenni and many others will do whatever they have to to stay alive. Run, fight, pick each other up when they stumble, fall in love…anything is possible at the end of the world.
– The First Days by Rhiannon Frater
The First Days stared off with a bang. The opening chapter titled Tiny Fingers was so emotionally charged I had tears trickling down my face while trying to read the story. I felt an instant emotional connection to Jenni one of the main characters in this story. At first the connection I felt was because the event that started this book ripped my heart out and made me bleed for Jenni; as the book progressed I felt connected to Jenni because well…She was awesome.
Katie the second lead character in this books intro into this novel was also powerful, just not as powerful as Jenni’s. Now you can call it playing favorites if you want but I feel like Katie’s character starts off strong but ends up being the weaker of the two characters. I think having characters that are total opposites in this story was a smart move on the author’s part because it gives female readers different heroines to relate to. I just so happened to find myself relating more to Jenni.
I usually really enjoy books about the end of the world where the characters are living out of backpacks and struggling to survive.
I love that Rhiannon Frater doesn’t waste time trying to intro characters. Instead Frater throws characters at the reader introducing each character through memories before z-day started. The memories made each character real to me and brought the story to life.
While the characters were strong and the intro to this story was amazing, I felt like the story itself was just good. It did have some epic actions scenes but as a whole it was just a good read and that’s okay. Not all stories are meant to be amazing reads some books you just enjoy, nothing more. So while The First Days was not a great book for me I did enjoy it.
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, no identity, 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 strangely 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. Scary, funny, and surprisingly poignant, Warm Bodies is about being alive, being dead, and the blurry line in between.