Never Slow Dance With a Zombie
By E. Van Lowe
3/5
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Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion meets Night of the Living Dead in this laugh-out-loud debut YA novel by Emmy Award-nominated TV writer E. Van Lowe
Principal Taft's 3 Simple Rules for Surviving a Zombie Uprising:
Rule #1: While in the halls, walk slowly and wear a vacant expression on your face. Zombies won't attack other zombies.
Rule #2: Never travel alone. Move in packs. Follow the crowd. Zombies detest blatant displays of individuality.
Rule #3: If a zombie should attack, do not run. Instead, throw raw steak at to him. Zombies love raw meat. This display of kindness will go a long way.
On the night of her middle school graduation, Margot Jean Johnson wrote a high school manifesto detailing her goals for what she was sure would be a most excellent high school career. She and her best friend, Sybil, would be popular and, most important, have boyfriends. Three years later, they haven't accomplished a thing!
Then Margot and Sybil arrive at school one day to find that most of the student body has been turned into flesh-eating zombies. When kooky Principal Taft asks the girls to coexist with the zombies until the end of the semester, they realize that this is the perfect opportunity to live out their high school dreams. All they have to do is stay alive....
“An unabashedly silly send-up of paranormal romance novels.” - Strange Horizons
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
E. Van Lowe
E. Van Lowe was born in New York City and moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school. He cowrote the Academy Award-nominated short film "Cadillac Dreams," and was a writer for many TV shows, including The Cosby Show, Knight Rider, and Even Stevens. He was nominated for an Emmy for his work on Even Stevens. He is the author of Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, a novel for young adults.
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Reviews for Never Slow Dance With a Zombie
32 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cute premise but the main character is so selfish and driven to be popular at all costs that it started to get annoying.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was so excited when I found this Zombie book! There were so many things I loved when I first saw it. The cover had the perfectly creepy, yet still appealing zombie boy on the cover wearing vintage prom clothes. The title spoke very clearly to the humorous tone of the book. And the blurb itself was very appealing. Normally I'm a guts and gore type of Zombie girl, but this just seemed like the kind of Shaun of the Dead style story that I couldn't resist.The opening was good, and it was easy to see why an agent or editor would keep reading. The main character, Margot and her best friend, Sybil, are quickly established and fleshed out ;-) The girls have an honestly refreshing friendship that feels real, well, for a while at least.The action starts fairly quickly, although some of it was pretty predictable. The predictability continued as the story progressed and for me the character of Margot just seemed to flop after a bit. I couldn't wrap my head around her reasoning behind some of her actions. This is what truly kept me from being absorbed into the story. I could take some of the unexplained acceptance the girls have of the zombies, and even the obvious plot turning points, but Margot becomes completely obsessed with the idea of popularity to the point of nearly getting herself and her best friend killed. And even then she doesn't learn her lesson. It's only when she learns that the popular bitch is as one dimensional as herself that she realizes what she's doing is crazy. That's when the pace of the book really picks up and Lowe wraps up the story in a few more pages.Overall, it was a fun read, but not enough blood and gore for me (NONE!), and even the knowledge that it's a humorous approach to zombies, it was just too unbelievable light.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A good review for this book is that, it is a good book for teenagers who are in high school. It explains a lot about how you want to pursue yourself in high school. The two main characters, Margot and Sybil, both want to be the popular girls in school. On 8th grade graduation night, Margot maid a manifesto for high school. She dreamed of being popular, going to parties, having the most popular boyfriend, basically anything a teenager would dream of in high school. But in her second year of High School she has not accomplished anything on her manifesto yet. When basically the whole school goes through a big change, will Margot and Sybil finally get to accomplish everything on there manifesto while dealing with flesh eating zombies?This book teaches us a good lesson about how we change throughout our teenage years and how we need our friends to be there for us when we do go through these changes. We need people there to help to make sure that wanting something so bad, is sometimes not worth it. Popularity isn't everything and being yourself is all you need to be popular in your own very special way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is about a girl named Margot. Margot is just a typical teen girl who wants to become popular. She is willing to give up her true best friend. Then one evening, everyone at the school except for Margot and Sybil(her best friend), become zombies. Margot realizes this is her chance to rule the school and she becomes cockier and turns Sybil against her. After many months of going to school and living among zombies, Margot finds out some people who can find a cure. When all the zombies are again human, Margot realizes that she doesn't need to be popular because she's thankful for everything she has.I think this book is ok. It's not a book I would really want to read again. This book just seems to be one of those typical kind of books that try to relate to teens but it doesn't seem to work. I think if this author had made the story a little bit longer, I would have liked it more. I think this book could use a little more imagination. To me it seems to be a little too boring. The author could have put more describing words in the story.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5One night Margot and her friend Sybil are reminiscing and find an old list Margot wrote. Things she wanted to accomplish in high school. And to Margot's dismay none have been accomplished. With the help of Sybil she attempts to ask out the most popular guy in school to the carnival.When she finds out his girlfriend is the head cheerleader she decides to skip the carnival. Luckily she did, because everyone who went turns into zombies!Sounds cute, and I really enjoyed it until the zombies showed up. Which is too weird for me to say, since zombies are my fave.When Margot and Sybil find out they are the only ones not zombies (except the principal) they decide to leave them all dead instead of tell the police. In return for not telling, they can be student president, head cheerleader, whatever they want. They want to be popular, and most of all Margot wants the boy she couldn't have before. Even though he's dead...weird right?I'm sure it's meant to be humorous, but I just found Margot selfish, thoughtless, and kind of cruel. I'm not sure how Margot and Sybil are friends considering they both are incredibly jealous of one another.A short read, funny in some places, but not my kind of zombie book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Slow Dance With A Zombie is quite a fun read that is sure to bring some chuckles along with some incredulous looks at the things Margot does (e.g. "train" zombie-Dirk to being her boyfriend). I loved the lists that she made throughout the book including Top Ten Advantages To Having A Zombie Boyfriend and some of the forged parent's notes to excuse her from gym class. Great humor! I thought the college application cover letter at the very beginning was an excellent touch :DMargot's best friend Sybil was a pretty interesting character - she reminded me of Phoebe from Friends with her sometimes bizarre statements and passions. Even though she had a weak moment with the whole Dirk situation, Sybil turned out to be a really great friend even if Margo did not appreciate her. Sometimes I sided with Margot when Sybil was just plain cuckoo, but other times I can sympathize with her since Margot went too far with the superficiality schemes. When you try to teach a zombie to be a boyfriend, pardon Sybil and I for having skeptical looks on our faces.The ending was a pleasant surprise in the whodunit department! Co-existing with zombies was a crazy set-up to begin with, and I never knew who was pure zombie, who acted the part, and who was in denial of living with zombies. And so it was hard - for me, at least - to narrow down the "zombie master" until the big reveal.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Margot has always wanted to be popular and have a boyfriend, but she is a nobody along with her best friend Sybil. One evening everyone in the school is turned into zombies apart from them and Margot finds a way to use the situation to her advantage. There are precautions you have to take having a zombie boyfriend, but Margot finally has her popular crush following her around. She convinces herself zombies are capable of love and loyalty and he is not just after the scraps of meat she carries around to reward his good behaviour.The problem is that to get her way she finds herself moving further away from Sybil. She discovers a dark place inside her that wants bad things to happen to her "best friend" who she sees as lame and trying to steal her spotlight. They are working at cross purposes as Sybil is trying to save the students while Margot is enjoying herself far too much being Queen of the school.This was a fun take on the zombie genre. I enjoyed getting to know Margot and despite being a very fictional tale, I found her a very realistic character. She was a typical teenager, thinking of herself and putting herself in front of her supposed friends. I would recommend it and read more by Van Lowe in the future as it was a fun and quick read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Best friends Margot and Sybil arrive at school one day to find most of their classmates are now zombies and are quickly turning the rest of the school into zombies as well. They manage to track down their still human principal Taft and get convinced to help him cover up this little problem until he can be promoted in 7 weeks. In return, Margot gets her dreams of being the most popular girl in school, get a boyfriend and head every elite committee in school. Sybil gets her chance to try and turn the school’s cliques upside down.I love zombie books and was very excited to read this one but I had to keep shaking my head while reading. I expected silliness, really I did but this was just over the top. The main defense they had against the zombies was hitting them on the nose with a newspaper. If that is not the epitome of silliness I do not know what is. It was pushing the point of absurdity that Margot actually thought it was great that she now had the zombie of one of the good looking jocks as her "boyfriend" despite the fact that she only kept him with a constant supply of red meat and constant whops to the nose with her newspaper. Whenever she tried to hold him he would try to take a bite out of her.I wanted to feel for Margot since I was also not one of the popular girls in school but everything she did was just so detestable that I could not empathize with her. Her realization of her horrible actions came too late and too suddenly for me to have a change of heart.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Margot Jean Johnson and her best friend Sybil Mulcahy are nobodies. Amanda Culpepper and the Twigettes (her mindless followers) are the bane of their existence. All Margot wants is everything on her high school manifesto to come true: be more popular than Amanda Culpepper, have a boyfriend, be invited to parties, and just eight more things she hasn't attained yet. This all changes after the school carnival when all of her classmates have turned into zombies, except Sybil. Principial Taft convinces them to pretend that eveything is ok and coexist peacefully with the zombies. Who is behind the outbreak? Should Margot try to figure out what's going on or bask in her newfound popularity?This book is a fun, light read. It's like a mixture of Mean Girls and Night of the Living Dead. E. Van Lowe captures the voice of a teenage girl very well. Not many males really know how girls interact with each other, so this is an impressive feat. Like in Mean Girls, girls are really not nice to each other. He shows how girls can tear each other down with just words. He also shows the weird dynamic between friends, both when they get along and when they don't. The popular crowd is full of false relationships and Margot, because she idolizes those "in" people, used this model in her relationship with Sybil. At first, she is kind of petty and jealous towards Sybil (who is nice to a fault). I think it takes talent to create a likeable character who does unlikeable things. The zombie situation makes her grow as a person.The book was filled with funny moments. I laughed out loud when one of the defenses against the undead was to rap them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Also, the fact that they could get used to going to a school filled with zombies is just hilarious to me. The dynamic between Margot and her zombie boyfriend Dirk is creepy and funny. Even the fact that the principal practically begs Margot and Sybil to go along with his plan and they go along with it is pretty amusing.Although on the surface, the story is funny and light, but there is a serious and important undertone. The girls are forced to blend in and not call attention to themselves to survive in the midst of zombies. To save the day, they have to break out of the cliques and do what's right. The message of the book is to do what's right for you and ignore what's cool or in. I think we need more teen books like this.