Undeadly

#1 in The Reaper Diaries series

by Michele Vail

Age: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal, Zombies

Format: Ebook, 304 pages
Published On: December 1, 2012
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: NetGalley

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First Sentence: So, my... um, friend gave me a diary for my sixteenth birthday because, apparently, it's a necromancer tradition.

Summary

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....

~ taken from Goodreads

My Thoughts

Undeadly is one of those books that when you look back in retrospective makes you wonder: why the hell did I like it? Especially since just a glance at the first sentence reminds me how horrible first person point-of-view narration by Molly was. She used phrases 'like', 'suckitude', 'crap' and other words that authors use to badly imitate teenage lingo. But although at first she was immensely annoying, Molly and her attitude grew on me and the urge to strangle her or yell at her that she is too stupid to live lessened as the world Michele Vail invented pulled me in.

One of the things that I liked is a setting. In an alternate version of Earth where necromancy is not just in fiction, we follow Molly as she struggles with her gift and tries to accept it. And I especially loved Nekyia Academy, private academy, which Molly ends up attending. The atmosphere had Hogwarts feel although with private room and personal servant you can't say Molly is just one of the crowd like Harry Potter.

Another thing that tipped the scales and made me enjoy Undeadly was huge amount of Egyptian mythology used. It's one of my weak spots and it's so rare to find a good book that features Egyptian gods in contemporary setting and with an interesting back-story. And Undeadly certainly had that.

With HUUUGE cliffhanger ending, Michele Vail definitely has me on the edge of my seat eagerly awaiting October 29th 2013 and sequel Unchosen to be published.

In The End...

If you like young adult paranormal novels and Egyptian mythology, then Undeadly might be the book you are looking for. But make sure to read the excerpt first before buying, because the style of narration will probably irritate some readers.