Firstlife - A DNF Rant

Firstlife (Everlife #1)
by Gena Showalter

What is it about:
ONE CHOICE.
TWO REALMS.
NO SECOND CHANCE.

Tenley “Ten” Lockwood is an average seventeen-year-old girl…who has spent the past thirteen months locked inside the Prynne Asylum. The reason? Not her obsession with numbers, but her refusal to let her parents choose where she’ll live—after she dies.

There is an eternal truth most of the world has come to accept: Firstlife is merely a dress rehearsal, and real life begins after death.

In the Everlife, two realms are in power: Troika and Myriad, longtime enemies and deadly rivals. Both will do anything to recruit Ten, including sending their top Laborers to lure her to their side. Soon, Ten finds herself on the run, caught in a wild tug-of-war between the two realms who will do anything to win the right to her soul. Who can she trust? And what if the realm she’s drawn to isn’t home to the boy she’s falling for? She just has to stay alive long enough to make a decision…

What did I think of it:
I should have known there was a large possibility I would not like the characters in this book. I didn't much care for the characters in Showalter's Alice in Zombieland after all. But the premise sounded intriguing enough that I wanted to give this book a try.

And soon I ran into my first major grumble.

Ten gets a roommate: a girl named Bow. If Bow had actually been a girl she might have been interesting. But the snarky emails that start this book made it clear that Bow is a boy named Archer who has been given a female body to get close to Ten. Knowing this I didn't like Bow/Archer. He's a horny jerk who grabs his own boobs, because: "Look Mommy, I suddenly have boobs! I'm so hot I'd do myself if I could."

Yeah... Moving on.

And as if Bow wasn't annoying enough: soon another boy gets introduced. Killian apparently is Irish, even though the worldbuilding doesn't mention the world this story is set in is our world. Killian doesn't care about that and throws out a "Lass" every opportunity he gets. Yes, Killian, we get it. You're handsome AND Irish. Forgive me that I don't swoon over your overuse of that word. People have names you know. Use those! (And yes: I will confess this is a personal pet peeve.)

Then Ten and Killian get set up for a date and they start making lame jokes about food-babies...
Ten: "I'm eating a lot because I want a food-baby."
Killian: "Then it's a good thing I used my fork to make holes in the chocolate cake."

......

This is when the book got tossed and I decided I didn't care enough about the premise to stand another second of Ten, Boob Boy and Lass Lad.

Maybe other people won't be so annoyed by these characters, but I'm done with Showalter's YA books for now. I still might give Lords of the Underworld a try, because I already have the first book somewhere in my TBR pile.

Why should you read it:
The premise does sound intriguing.


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Alice in Zombieland - Book Review

Alice in Zombieland (White Rabbit Chronicles #1)
by Gena Showalter

What is it about:
She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real...

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies...

What did I think of it:
Going by the title of this book and the title of this series I expected this book to be a zombie retelling of Alice in Wonderland.

Well... There are some references to Alice in Wonderland, but those are few and far between. And don't get me started on the zombies. I was not pleased with the zombies!

Once I let go of the disappointment that this wasn't a retelling, and that the zombies were not the kind of zombies I like, I did get into the story.

It does have a lot of teenage drama and some cool action. I didn't much warm up to Alice and her love interest Cole. Cole's friends weren't that nice either. Of all the characters in the book I liked Kat, one of Alice's new friends, the most. And even Kat didn't feel like a real person. All of the characters felt staged. Even when things got tense and heads started to roll, I wasn't invested enough in the characters to care.

In the end this was a moderately enjoyable read, but I won't read the other books in this series. I do have the first book of Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series in my TBR pile, so I will give that a try to see if that's more to my liking.

Why should you read it:
It's a nice Paranormal YA read