Undeadly (Reaper Diaries, #1)

by Michele Vail

The day I turned 16, my boyfriend-to-be died. I brought him back to life. Then things got a little weird...

Molly Bartolucci wants to blend in, date hottie Rick and keep her zombie-raising abilities on the down-low. Then the god Anubis chooses her to become a reaper--and she accidentally undoes the work of another reaper, Rath. Within days, she's shipped off to the Nekyia Academy, an elite boarding school that trains the best necromancers in the world. And her personal reaping tutor? Rath.

Life at Nekyia has its pluses. Molly has her own personal ghoul, for one. Rick follows her there out of the blue, for another...except, there's something a little off about him. When students at the academy start to die and Rath disappears, Molly starts to wonder if anything is as it seems. Only one thing is certain--Molly's got an undeadly knack for finding trouble....

• ISBN10: 128369106X
• ISBN13: 9781283691062
• Publish Date: 1 January 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 21 April 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Harlequin Teen
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

Not perfect but certainly not bad. I liked this. I enjoyed the Egyptian mythology angle. The plot was alright. There were some funny lines. Molly was tedious at times - she could sound very young - more tween like than young adult but for the most part she was fine. The romance was okay. 3 stars.

[Amber]

Review also posted here: http://www.booksofamber.com/2012/11/undeadly-by-michele-vail.html

The plot of Undeadly was fun and fast paced. The Egyptian mythology was woven into the story really well, and there were no huge info-dumps at all, which I really appreciated. I find that some YA books, when including mythology such as this, often try to throw everything at the reader at once but that wasn't the case with Undeadly. The mythology was very unique, and it's something that I loved reading about. I've read books about reapers before, but the Egyptian aspect was new to me. It's definitely convinced me to check out more books based on Egyptian mythology!

Molly was a great protagonist. She sounded and acted like a sixteen year old girl, which was both realistic and entertaining. She was the perfect mix of snarky, friendly and polite. It made me really feel for her when certain things were revealed in the story. Vail's writing style worked really well with Molly's character, too.

The only thing I disliked about the novel was how predictable it was. I knew almost exactly where the story was going from about fifty pages in, and I knew who the bad guy(s) would be, and what the 'surprise' reveal was going to be towards the end. This took away from my enjoyment of the story, because I love being surprised while reading.

Undeadly was a great read, and I'll definitely be reading the next book in the series, Unchosen, when it's released next year.

[inlibrisveritas]

This book immediately caught my attention when I saw it. It has two things I really adore, Egyptian mythology and zombies. When it comes to Egyptian mythology I’ve been really starved for it since Greek and Roman have exploded onto the scene. So I snapped this one up with the hopes of having a double whammy of fun…but instead I was kind of left a bit underwhelmed.

The plot is fresh and I haven’t personally read anything in the YA catergory with a Necromancer main character. Add that with the great use of the Egyptian myths involving the gods and the soul, and you have a great basis for something that could really stand out. Vail added some great elements with an interesting Necro school, Anubis (my favorite myth god), and the fact that zombies have a rather interesting place in society; but I think what brought it all down was the main character, Molly.

Molly is a bit frustrating. At first it was the way she talked, because she does use some dated language that I haven’t heard since the nineties, but I got over it because it’s just one of those things that I try to give some on. Then it became increasingly apparent that Molly was not going to win any awards for intelligence…in fact I doubt she would be invited to the award ceremony at all. She’s not the typical teenager that just requires a little time to see things clearly, she’s just plain frustratingly stupid. There is a moment where she can’t figure out who the bad guy is that I gave up all hope on her making a come back. She also comes off as increasingly shallow as the book progresses. There is a romance but it’s kind of pointless and a bit sappy, but the outcome while unconventional was still a bit predictable storyline-wise. Rath however was likeable and while there isn’t a ton of him in the book I’m really curious about him, and I want to see more of him

The one thing that really saved this for me was the Egyptian aspect. I loved the detail involved with the soul (ka) and how the different parts are important for various reasons. I also love that there are several different types of Necromancers and that they have different abilities. Of course I loved having Anubis play a direct role in the story as well, because I’ll be completely honest I’m a Anubis fan girl and all you have do is mention him in a story and you get points. I can be forgiving with the fact that Anubis is a bit…fluffy but that’s only because I know he was also a patron to orphans in Egypt, so I can deal but I really wanted more strength from him. I would love to see what exactly being Anubis’ Chosen means because while it’s explained I wanted to see more of what she was going to have to go through.

This wasn’t what I was hoping for and I was disappointed overall.

I received this from Harlequin and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[kimbacaffeinate]

review to post shortly.

[Ashley]

booknook — Young Adult book reviews

I was really excited to read Undeadly because it sounded like some kind of awesome Harry Potter zombie/reaping book! Totally cool, right? As promised, Undeadly had some awesome story elements, but the book itself wasn't as great as I was hoping.

My first issue with Undeadly was the main character. This issue is more of a personal preference thing though. Molly has a really strong voice throughout the entire book, which is a good thing, but she came off as too young and immature for my liking. She is 16 years old, which is fine, but there were just a lot of behavioural elements that annoyed me. In fact, one of the characters in the book described my thoughts really well:

I think you're immature, irresponsible, and ditzy.
—ARC of Undeadly by Michele Vail

The main problem was that Molly was constantly using vocabulary that felt really childish. Here are a few examples:

Hoo-kay
OMG
Whatevs

At first it didn't bother me, but after the one millionth instance of "hoo-kay" (every time she would say "okay"), I was getting ready to explode. But this behaviour might not bother plenty of people; it just so happens that those terms and that kind of behaviour irks me.

Another similar annoyance was the way that Rath always referred to Molly as "brown eyes." I don't think he ever used her real name once throughout the entire book.

(The below spoiler happens towards the beginning of the book, but it's kind of a book point, which is why I put it in spoilers. I don't actually reveal anything that happens near the end.)
(show spoiler)[Furthermore, I was annoyed with Molly when she found out she was adopted. I guess I shouldn't really judge people who get adopted, so maybe I'm just insensitive, but I hate it when someone finds out they're adopted and then they say to their adoptive father, "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD! YOU'RE A LIAR! I DON'T BELONG HERE! I'M NOT PART OF THIS FAMILY! THIS ISN'T MY HOUSE!" Her adoptive father was so nice and sweet and she basically ignored him for the entire book because she was pissed at him for lying to her. Maybe I shouldn't be judging because I haven't been adopted, but it was just another thing that kind of set me off. I mean, relax. The guy raised you, why does it matter so much if you don't share blood?] (hide spoiler)

Moving on, the only other problem I had with Undeadly was the length and level of detail. This is a really short book: only 272 pages. But Michele Vail has a lot of content to cover, and I think the level of detail suffered as a result. In Undeadly we have zombies, reapers, necromancers, Molly, Molly's family, an elite necromancer school, a new group of friends, a love interest, a school bully/enemy, training at school, etc. There just weren't enough pages in the book to give all these things an adequate amount of detail. As a result, I feel like I didn't get invested in any of the characters that well and they felt really shallow.

Many of the events also felt brief, and the scenes often jumped or skipped quite a bit. As an example, we never actually have a full, detailed scene of one of Molly's training sessions. They're all just briefly skipped over. And when Molly meets new friends, we get introduced to them, but since the book jumps from one event to another so quickly, I feel like they went from being acquaintances to being a tight-knit group of friends almost immediately. I never really got to know them or see their relationship develop.

Overall, I just lacked that deep connection to the book because of the small amount of detail. The book felt more like a summary of events rather than a detailed account. Since I couldn't get that invested, I wasn't super excited about the book and I wasn't jumping up and down with excitement. But Undeadly did still have some strong points..

The overall story and idea in Undeadly is awesome. I really love the incorporation of Egyptian mythology! In some ways it reminded me of The Kane Chronicles. We get Anubis, the Underworld, parts of the soul, and more! The mythology was great to read about and I was super eager to learn more!

I know my review is critical, but that doesn't mean Undeadly is a bad book. I wasn't bored, I wasn't clawing my eyes out (except for maybe "hoo-kay"), and I wasn't sitting there thinking "This is awful." The book was entertaining and I was enjoying reading it. With more detail and a slightly less annoying main character, I think I would have really loved the book! I still encourage people to give this book a chance, just don't go into it expecting it to be mind-blowing.