Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1)

by Isaac Marion

[nannah]

Maybe it's 3.5, maybe, but there's a lot that pushed it back down to three.

But first, I'm going to cover what I really, really liked about Warm Bodies:

Perry Kelvin. He was a great, fleshed-out character, and I wanted more of him every time he was mentioned. There was great care put into the Perry/R dynamic that wasn't present throughout the rest of the book, in my opinion, and I hungered for it in a way comparable to zombies hungering for brains and memories. I loved, loved loved the way that eventually the voices switch from italics to quotes as the book progresses. That is, Perry's thoughts starts off in quotations because he begins more real than R (who's thoughts are in italics, more voiceless), and later R switches to quotations because he's more realized now than Perry. It's brilliant and subtle. I adored it. If the rest of the book were so gorgeous and subtle, I would've given this the easiest five stars of my life and would probably be out buying every version of this book right now.

But there were things that I really didn'tlike. Like the zombies in the beginning not acting enough like zombie monsters for there to be a noticeable enough change at the end of the book. I get that R needed to be relatable but I don't think he really needed a "zombie society" with a structured marital system. I thought And there were pictures that just didn't fit right, or were almost quite laughable, like the "scary" skeletons handing out polaroid pictures.

The climax fell flat. To be honest, I couldn't even quite tell you what resolved the climax. Why did the skeletons all just wander away (which in itself is kind of a disappointing resolve in itself)? I just . . . I don't understand! What was the point of making the (thing) with Grigio almost erotically slow? Maybe it was all for effect, but if so, I didn't feel anything. I feel like Perry and R should have had a part in this climax, but Perry wasn't there, and it wasn't much about R. This all just didn't seem to work for me.

Now to the worst bits. I don't know how these little tidbits made it to publishing. But there were some really horrible language and sentences that I just couldn't handle: fat-shaming and some sexist language. At one point, R and Julie somehow come onto the topic of zombies eating overweight people. Yes, that's right, because this somehow needs to be talked about? And do you know what R does? R sticks his tongue out, points to it, and gags. He gags Apparently even zombies are picky, and they won't eat overweight people because they have to "pick around the fat" or something. I couldn't believe my eyes.

And wait, that's not even the worst one. Just wait. I found this gem on page 132: "Julie studies me dubiously, like a photographer forced to consider a chubby model." Never mind the mentioning of an emotion outside of dialogue (in adverb form!), this is absolutely horrendous. I actually gasped. Only the fact that this was a library copy kept this book from sailing across the room.

And then we come to some sexist language. It was kind of pervasive in undertones throughout the entire book (and I really wasn't surprised this was written by a guy), but sometimes there were things that came up that were completely unnecessary. Such as mentioning how Julie was as "unpretty as I've ever seen her" or something like that. Dude, R, you're a zombie. Even if he weren't, Marion still doesn't need to have that observation mentioned in his main protag's thoughts. It's just . . . all like an undercurrent in this book. I was so sick of Marion at the last page. I just feel like he's this massive fat-shaming, sexist douchebag, and the last thing I want to do is read more of his books to see what else he unconsciously writes into his dialogue/prose.

All in all, there were a lot of sweet parts in Warm Bodies, however, and I did love the ending about the real cure. That was lovely. I do love Nora, and there were beautiful moments in the book that I drank up and treasured. However, there were also disgusting crap that destroyed the narrative and parts that didn't quite make sense that really clashed with what I loved.