Review: The Infects

The Infects
By Sean Beaudoin
Expected publication September 25, 2012 by Candlewick

It's the end of the world as we know it and Nick (also known as Nero) is trying to survive in the wilderness. Faced with the sudden appearance of flesh-munching monsters, Nick must figure out how to escape back to civilization before he becomes a zombie himself. But first, he has to make sure that the girl he's been crushing on is okay, too.

The publisher was giving away e-galleys of this title at School Library Journal's SummerTeen event and, since I love zombies, I happily downloaded a copy. I had read one of Beaudoin's novels before and enjoyed it pretty well. In addition, it seemed like this book would be a very different take on the zombie novel, and I'm always looking for innovative things. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I had hoped. Yes, this book definitely takes zombies in a new direction - it just wasn't one for which I really cared. I also had a hard time with the characters - I found them boring. Actually, for a zombie book, I found the whole thing rather boring. Additionally, I felt like the book was trying too hard - to be clever and funny, to be gross and scary, just trying too hard at everything. In the end, this made it hard for the book to be successful in any aspect. I found myself continuing to read more out of a sense of commitment than enjoyment. And when the book ended, I just felt disappointed. Yes, there is a decent amount of action and, occasionally, the book actually succeeds at the humor it is trying so hard to include. But overall, this book just felt like an experimental pretentious mess. That being said, I can see that this book does actually have quite a bit of appeal to a certain type of teen reader.The tone of the book is very sarcastic and, maybe this is weird to say, but it reminds me of hipsters. There is definitely some violence and gore which I can see as a definite draw for some kids. So, I think this book will definitely have an audience. It just wasn't a book I enjoyed as much as I thought I would.

Thanks to the publisher for a digital advance reader's copy provided via NetGalley.