Review: Living Dead Girl - Nessie Strange

Title: Living Dead Girl
Series: Living Dead World Book 1
Author: Nessie Strange
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Etopia Press
Release Date: January 15, 2014
Pages: 234

Living Dead World Book One

Jen MacLellan has hit a dead end...

Jen knows tattooed, blue-haired Jack Norris is trouble the minute he opens his front door. And being a mortician in the avante garde East Side of Providence, Jen has seen a lot. Jack has recruited Jen's teenage brother Drew to play drums for his less-than-respectable punk band, and Jen has no choice but to follow their gigs to keep her little brother out of trouble. But when Drew goes missing, she finds herself in the awkward position of asking for Jack's help. Shocked that he agrees, Jen decides she may have misjudged him. Worse, she might even like him.

But when Jen is brutally attacked, she awakens in the hospital where a Sid Vicious look-alike greets her with the news: she's dead, and he's the reaper assigned to take her away. Yeah, not so much. Refusing to leave, Jen's spirit watches helplessly as her loved ones suffer, powerless to ease her family's grief or prevent the police from accusing Jack of her murder. Desperate to help them, Jen convinces the reaper to bring her back. But reanimating corpses isn't as easy as it looks, and neither is finding a killer before it’s too late...

Reviewed by: Linda Tonis

Member of the Paranormal Romance Review Team

Jen MacLellan is a Mortician who lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her father and her sixteen year old brother. After her mother’s death, Jen had to assume the responsibility of an adult since her father just can’t handle things. Her father is always relying on her to care for her brother and handle his punishment. He also relies on her at the funeral home. One night Jen has to get her brother who is hanging out with a group of guys and drinking. When she knocks on the door where Drew is, she comes face to face with a blue-haired tattooed guy, Jack Norris. It’s his house, and he seems to have no problem with her little brother drinking and playing cards with a much older crowd.

When Jack comes to Jen’s home asking her father permission for Drew to play in their band, she is shocked when he agrees. It seems Drew is a prodigy at the drums, and Jack has promised to watch after him. The relationship between Jack and Jen is one of teasing and dislike, but that is only at the beginning. Jen has a boyfriend, Craig, a pompous, know it all guy who does everything he can to control Jen, and apparently he has been succeeding. When Jen finally sends him on his way, she realizes she sees more in Jack than she realized. A love affair begins.

Jack and Jen couldn’t be more opposite. His band is a punk band, and he and the other members are all living in a totally different world from the one Jen knows. Jack comes from a well to do family; his father is a Senator. Jack is everything Craig was not, loving, attentive and protective. The only thing that gets in the way of their relationship is a girl named Merry, a singer from another group, who plays the same venues as Jack’s band quite often. Merry wants Jack and is willing to do anything she has to do to break them up.

One night while sitting in Jack’s bedroom, Jen is viciously attacked, leaving her facing a Reaper named Sam. Sam needs to take her soul, but Jen is not about to go anywhere until she finds out who killed her and helps Jack get over her death. Sam makes an arrangement with her whereby he will give her five days back in her dead body. She is now a zombie, but can she keep things together long enough to finish her business? Can she find her killer before she decomposes or kills someone? Can she help Jack face a life without her?

A lot happens after Jen’s death, none of which I will divulge. Does she start eating people? Does she try to eat the one’s she loves? Can she finish what she needs to do and go back with Sam to where she now belongs? There is a cliffhanger, but not one that would make you want to throw the book across the room. It is where one existence ends and a new one is about to start. I love this book, even though zombie books are not my usual reading material. There is some sex, romance, lies, secrets, and violence.