Review: Undeadly by Michele Vail

Pages: 272
Expected Publication: November 20th 2012 by Harlequin Teen
# in Series: #1 in The Reaper Diaries
Source: Harlequin Teen via Netgalley

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 Summary from Goodreads:

“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 plusses. 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….“

My Thoughts & Review:

Undeadly takes place in Las Vegas and in a modern world where necromancers and zombies are very common.  The main character, Molly, was born with the gift to reanimate zombies and up until her 16th birthday she thinks she will be working at her father’s zombie-emporium. On her 16th birthday everything changes. First she has a dream where Anubis visits her. Second, her soon-to-be boyfriend dies during her party and she someone captures what is left of his soul and shoves it back into him. Then… she finds out she is a reaper and is sent off to Nekyia Academy, a boarding school for necromancers & reapers.

Ahhh… where do I start with this one.  Let’s go with the characters.  There were way too many characters going on.  Sometimes it was really hard to keep them straight.  Molly is the main character and I had a massive love/hate relationship with her.  I’ve finally summed up my thoughts on her: she has to be the dumbest girl ever.  It’s astonishing how unintelligent she is.  First off, her father runs a zombie emporium so she knows a fair deal about souls/zombies/seers/etc…, plus she is training to be a necromancer and she STILL goes and stuffs only part of her “boyfriends” soul into him? Second, when she reaches the Academy she tries to hide the fact that she is legacy even though it’s a known fact that she is the first one to come from her bloodline since her Mom so it’s not going to be a secret for long. Gahhh, that annoyed me. Also, at one part of the story, a group of “elites” go to Las Vegas to look for a soul sucker, and basically she is in danger and stops to pause to reflect upon her looks in the mirror? Honestly. However I did like the way the author wrote from Molly’s point of view.  It definitely sounded like a teenager was speaking, and from her diary none the less. That was probably one of my favorite elements of the book.  Rick is her boyfriend that she “saved” and I found him just plain sketchy… and that was even before.  Rath is a fellow reaper, who is actually dead… and you can so tell there is going to be a romance there.  Then there are her grandparents, all of her bazillion friends, another reaper trainer, the headmistress… and to be honest I barely remember any of their names because there was just way to many characters being introduced.

The story had a lot of potential because I can’t say I have read anything quite like this before.  Zombies, ghouls, and all sorts of paranormal/supernaturals were being introduced, it was quite fun. I loved the entire idea of necromancers and a fancy, schmancy school for them. And lets be honest, I love any type of book that revolves around a school.  It didn’t reach its full potential though.  The story was really quite predictable, and because of the main character it was hard not to really love this book. It was extremely easy to read though and I finished it in a few hours.

The ending was probably the part that irritated me off the most. It literally just stopped… and in the strangest spot. Despite all of that, I did like the book and I can see the series getting better as it has such a good plot behind it.  I really hope that the next book is better though.

I would recommend trying this if it sounds interesting, but it’s more of a borrow from the library type of book, not rush out to buy book.

 

My Rating: