The Blondes

by Emily Schultz

"Hazel Hayes is a grad student living in New York City. As the novel opens, she learns she is pregnant (from an affair with her married professor) at an apocalyptically bad time: random but deadly attacks on passersby, all by blonde women, are terrorizing New Yorkers. Soon it becomes clear that the attacks are symptoms of a strange illness that is transforming blondes--whether CEOs, flight attendants, students, or accountants--into rabid killers"--

• ISBN10: 1250043352
• ISBN13: 9781250043351
• Publish Date: 21 April 2015 (first published 1 August 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 17 June 2021
• Imprint: Thomas Dunne Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[elvinagb]

Hazel Hayes goes to NYC to work on her doctoral thesis and shortly after she arrives she finds she is pregnant, by her thesis advisor from Toronto. The day she finds out, the world is struck by an outbreak of a SARS type virus that seems to affect only blonde women. The virus turns them into crazed killers and soon enough the population is shaving their heads and dying their hair to avoid the plague.
Hazel decides to tell the father of her child that she is pregnant and return to Toronto, but circumstances soon find her in quarantine and out of touch of all her friends and family.
Hazel is telling her story to her unborn child while hiding out at the cabin owned by her ex-lover and his wife. She recounts her childhood, her time in NYC and what is happening to her now as she copes with her pregnancy and Grace, her ex-lover's wife.
We see a world turned upside down by fear and suspicion and a new idea of what it is to be a blonde. Despite all that is falling apart around Hazel, she copes, survives and does what she can to save her own and her child's life.
This is a great take on all the zombie apocalypse type stories that are so popular.