Zomromcom by Olivia Dade
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
Olivia Dad’s Zomromcom is not in fact a romance novel where a protagonist falls in love with a zombie. Who knew?
Well, perhaps anyone who read the synopsis, which clearly, I did not. I saw the title and the adorable cover and was intrigued enough to give it a go. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed there was no zombie love. I was so curious how it was going to work.
Now I’ll never know…
So, what is it about then? This story is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape and follows our MC, Edie Brandstrup, who lives alone and has seemingly excelled at surviving in this world. She’s well-versed in the dangers and considers herself prepared for everything.
At the start of the novel Edie attempts to save her harmless-seeming, and of course stunningly-attractive, neighbor after the first zombie breach of their community in decades.
As it turns out though, the neighbor she assumed was a clueless bro is actually a very adept, super old and slightly grumpy vampire with a large sword. When he turns the tables and ends up saving her instead, Edie finds herself a little weak in the knees.
For all of his grumpiness though, the vampire, one Gaston ‘Max’ Boucher, quickly becomes quite protective over our Edie, and insists that she stay within his bunker until the breach has been resolved.
As you can imagine, with two people in forced proximity, with fear of the unknown outside, things heat up quickly. Edie isn’t willing to turn a blind eye though to what is going on with the zombies. There are innocent people still out there who may not be as prepared as they are. Thus, the two set out with the hopes of helping in the fight for humanity.
This was cute. I liked it. I was drawn quickly to Edie as a main character. She was funny and I loved her perspective, the way she viewed everything around her. She had a great sense of humor and I appreciated the lightheartedness she brought to the story.
Max was swoony too and I did like him as the love interest. I could certainly see why Edie would fall for him so quickly and their banter was great. With this being said, the story itself did feel overly-long and slightly repetitive.
The backdrop of the zombie apocalypse was quite refreshing though, and they even spent a bit time in an abandoned mall, which I loved. That’s such a classic zombie setting. I thought that was really fun. After the mall though, it sort of lost me. I found my eyes glazing over, just wanting it to end.
I see that this is set to be a series and I am interested to see what the next one is going to be about. If it will be connected by characters, or the world, or just another romance featuring a different paranormal character. Depending on the content, I may check it out.
Thank you to the publisher, Berkley, for providing me with a copy to read and review. Even though this one didn’t quite knock my socks off, I did really like Olivia Dade’s writing and sense of humor.
I’ll absolutely be picking up more from this author!
