The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies

Image of The Girls' Guide to Dating Zombies
Author(s): 
Release Date: 
February 9, 2012
Publisher/Imprint: 
Potatoworks Press
Pages: 
242
Reviewed by: 

“Lynn Messina’s writing style and storytelling prowess is not just skillful, but also incredibly enjoyable and entertaining. Perfectly applying her fantastic sense of humor and satirical style, Ms. Messina lends legitimacy to an otherwise outrageous concept—and in the process renders it strangely plausible. . . . Light, funny, and often cringe-worthy—but in a good way—The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies makes you really appreciate men and offers ways to view them in an entirely new—and quite flattering—light.”

Lynn Messina is no stranger to really fun fiction. Starting with her fashion forward novels, Fashionistas, and Savvy Girl then moving on to her classic-paranormal mash up Little Vampire Women, Ms. Messina sets the stage for her best novel yet: The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies.

Ladies, if there were ever a time to switch teams, this is it; because, what’s on the menu after 99.9999 percent of the men are obliterated by “The Blight” in the not-too-distant-future isn’t pretty—and I mean that in every possible connotation.

As if dating isn’t difficult enough, the year 2020 brings a rare plague that pretty much wipes men off the face of the earth, save for a few hundred thousand—and they’re milking their new status for everything it’s worth. All that’s left in the dating pool are zombies, aka zomboys.

Though they don’t crave human brains, zomboys are extremely malodorous, can watch football for hours, don’t really listen when you talk, and only grunt on occasion in response. So what, might you ask, makes them so different from regular men? Short of the potential for them to leave a few limbs lying around, along with their socks, not much.

However, there is good news: women no longer have to be self-conscious about their bodies, zomboys don’t have cell phones to incessantly check sports scores and, best of all, they love shopping for shoes. So if you don’t mind the stench of rotting dermis or missing limbs, you’re in for a treat.

Luckily, the world also has Hattie Cross, a woman who lost her father to the plague when she was only a child. Her final memory of her father is of watching helplessly as he ate her cat before lumbering out of the house forever. Hattie is a journalist for a rag newspaper and the author of The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies, a manual of sorts written to help women navigate the unchartered waters of dating zombies—or the “reliving” as they are now called—and all that’s entailed; and, yes, that includes undead sex.

An instant celebrity after being featured on a morning talk show, Hattie is finally invited to conduct a much-coveted interview with Matilda Stansfield, one of the most powerful business woman in the world and CEO of the top pharmaceutical company Geiser and Meyser.

G&M produces an extensive line of zombaceuticals such as: Zombreeze, which neutralizes zombie smell from the inside. Zombitrex, a revolutionary drug for zombified neurological decay that helps to restore synaptical brain activity, and Zombiagra that does exactly what you think it does.

During the in-depth piece on Stansfield, Hattie’s sharp journalistic instincts uncover ground-breaking information that will not only make her career, but may even change the entire world—again.

Lynn Messina’s writing style and storytelling prowess is not just skillful, but also incredibly enjoyable and entertaining. Perfectly applying her fantastic sense of humor and satirical style, Ms. Messina lends legitimacy to an otherwise outrageous concept—and in the process renders it strangely plausible.

Despite its levity, this zombie tale holds a rather subdued message that is compelling and a bit unsettling at the same time; however, the author’s subtle conveyance causes it to fit and flow seamlessly, contributing nicely to the book’s allure.

Light, funny, and often cringe-worthy—but in a good way—The Girls’ Guide to Dating Zombies makes you really appreciate men and offers ways to view them in an entirely new—and quite flattering—light.