Angel Crawford is not perfect. She is young, addicted to various pills, and living with her alcoholic father in a crappy house in southern Louisiana. She is also a high school dropout with a criminal record. Angel has very little going for her until she is involved in a deadly car accident. Between her injuries and her earlier alcohol and pill binge, she should have been dead. Instead, she wakes up in the hospital recovering from an overdose and completely uninjured. Her memory is fuzzy and she wonders if she hallucinated the whole thing. But then stranger things happen.

Someone leaves Angel an anonymous note along with clothing and some odd drinks at the hospital. The note tells her to show up at the morgue and that there will be a job waiting for her there. She must work there for exactly one month and drink whatever is in the bottles every other day or else the person who left the note will let her probation officer know she overdosed. If that happens Angel will go to jail, where, the anonymous benefactor writes, she will die within a few days. 

Angel has no idea what to make of all of this, but she follows the instructions. She has no desire to go to jail and end up like her mother. Stranger still, all of her old habits do nothing for her anymore. Take a pill to go to sleep? Nothing. Take a hit of marijuana? No high. It does not take long after Angel shows up at the morgue for her new job to realize what her new addiction is…she can smell it as soon as they open her first autopsy’s skull.

I am really amazed by this book. It definitely exceeded my expectations. I could tell that I would like it and that it would be a fun read, but it was so much more than that, even. I am not a zombie virgin anymore, but I still have not read a ton of zombie books. Actually, let me think…this would be my…sixth zombie book. But, My Life as a White Trash Zombie is the first zombie book I have read that is from the point-of-view of the zombie. In all of the other books, zombies were the dead, nasty, bad guys who you wanted to avoid at all costs. In My Life as a White Trash Zombie, Angel actually becomes more human after she becomes a zombie. She was failing as a human being, poisoning her mind and body. After she became a zombie, she was able to get her life together for the first time.

I bet you are wondering if zombie Angel is nasty. Nope! No one would be able to tell Angel is a zombie by looking at her, as long as she has had brains. It is only after a couple of days without brains that a zombie in this world will begin to smell like death and decay and another day after that when body parts begin falling off and the person starts looking like the classic zombie. As long as Angel has access to brains, she can live a relatively normal life. I found that to be very unique about this book.

This brings me to Angel’s new profession. Whoever left her the anonymous note clearly knew what she had become…maybe even changed her. That person knew that Angel would need access to brains. What better place than a morgue? Anonymous person put a good deal of thought into this whole thing and provided Angel with a steady supply of brains.

I actually really loved Angel. Deep down, she is a good, genuine person and because of her living situation, she has always felt she had to make such bad choices with her own life. It is sad that on her own, Angel admits that she never would have gotten clean, but becoming a zombie was like instant rehab. Once she began to understand what she was and stopped fighting it so much, she was able to really become Angel for the first time in her life. She was sober and much happier with her life. She learned to love her job and to make connections with her coworkers and make a good bit of money to clean up her life even more. The only things she still could not control were her father and his behavior. Angel is a really likable character and I just loved the way her mind works.

The other characters include the people Angel works with at the morgue, people she meets on scene when she picks up a body, and two other zombies whose names will not be mentioned to prevent spoilers. Marcus, a police detective whom Angel meets on scene, is a really great guy and a nice side character. He is a really caring guy once you get to know him (Angel met him before under circumstances that had her on the wrong side of the law) and I am sure there will be more Marcus in the sequel. 

I love the mixture of the mystery Angel tries to solve throughout the book (the mystery of who turned her and the mystery of who is decapitating people), the humor, and the theme of redemption. This book was just stellar all around. I do want to caution readers with weak stomachs: in my opinion, things do not get too graphic in here, but there are some pretty creative descriptions of dead bodies and brain-eating. Still, give it a chance despite your stomach if you can. I just cannot say enough good things about My Life as a White Trash Zombie! I highly recommend it to zombie lovers and I suggest that it is age appropriate for those sixteen and older.

One more thing! The cover: how awesome is it? It is PINK! The zombie chick looks super cool and did you see her tattoo? It is a brain and it says, “I love brains”! 

—-