Eve Brenner: Zombie Girl 
is the book I’ve been waiting for without even knowing it. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s the debut book for author Alessia Giacomi. She brings more to the table in terms of character and plot than seems fair for her first book. In short, this book blew me away.
The story begins in Egypt, where Eve and her friends, Cam and Alex, are at a dig site looking for artifacts with their favorite professor. Tenacious Eve disobeys their professor’s wishes and ventures into a tomb, looking to find something remarkable and life-changing. She gets more than she and her friends bargained for, and right out of the gate the reader is drawn into the chaos that ensues.
Throughout the book the viewpoint changes. The reader is given the story through Eve, Cam, and Alex’s eyes. In many ways, this allows Giacomi to sidestep the pitfalls of having to provide background information, since the friend’s memories fill in the gaps. In this way, the reader understands that the three friends have been through several traumatic life events, and their friendship has always remained strong. But is it strong enough to survive Eve’s eventual transformation into a zombie?
Giacomi is patient, and draws the reader deeper into her book with each page. The transformation into zombie is slow at first, but rapidly picks up speed. Giacomi is likewise patient with the obstacles that Eve and her friends face. As Eve changes, so do the types of struggles they encounter – and there is never an easy way out for anyone. Eve and her friends also change, and so does the dynamic between them. Giacomi masterfully navigates all of the simultaneous changes in a way that is seamless. It feels organic, and adds a layer of believability to what is an otherwise clearly fictitious story.
Eve Brenner: Zombie Girl serves as the pilot book for a series that I will be following extremely closely – and you should too. Giacomi’s origin story is a great standalone book, but also sets the tone for the rest of this unique series. My only wish is that someone, somewhere would make this into a movie. We have movies about slow shambling zombies. We have movies about running zombies. We have movies about zombies in love. Why not a poignant and scary zombie story about a girl coming to terms with her transformation?
