Bad Taste in Boys (Kate Grable)

by Carrie Harris

Review 2020
I liked this even better the second time. I'm more on board with science and zombies now I guess. I really love the concept of this book. It's paranormal with sciency explanations and it's very unique. It's fascinating the idea of a zombie virus and I love how Kate comes to evaluate the evidence and come to a conclusion. It's pretty funny too - there's lots of witty dialogue, sarcastic remarks and amusing interactions. The romance was what let this down I think. It was random and out of place and the love interest, Aaron was kind of flat. But there's not as much as I remember either so that helps. I liked Kate but as I said below, she cares too much about what others think - it's just that now that I'm older I can tune out the teenage angst more easily. She was ambitious and smart and a little naive at times but fairly well rounded. Jonah is awesome. I love his pseudosword. And his hacking skills. And I love that he gets his own novella, if not his own book. Overall this was great. This would be suitable for older middle grade readers. It's pretty tame in both romance and plot. 4 stars.

Review 2012
Weird book. I initially bought it for the cover, it's simply gorgeous. The story sounded alright, bit outside of my normal tastes but definitely something different. The book was good. It started off a bit slow but it picked up as the book progressed and I flew through the last half. I liked the heroine for the most part. I liked her relationship with her little brother. I appreciated the fact she was a nerd but the focus on that kind of put me off a little. I think I maybe would've appreciated her more if she wasn't so caught up in what everyone thinks. I thought it was interesting that she was epileptic but I didn't really like all the negative comments about her being weird and freaky because of it. Felt kind of harsh. I liked that she was ambitious, the med school thing was cool and the science stuff was unique. I didn't like Aaron. Or them together; that was strange. Personally thought Mike would've been a better option and I was kind of hoping she'd decide she didn't like Aaron and go for Mike. I didn't really understand why Aaron even liked her, there was no real basis for that. I liked Rocky, thought she was a good character, wasn't the biggest fan of Kiki. It was good for a simple lighthearted read though and I'll definitely read the rest of the series.