This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 3, 2013.

Warm Bodies

By Isaac Marion – Atria Books – April 26, 2011

Review by Robin Marx

Warm Bodies is a zombie romance for young adult readers. I'm not generally interested in love stories—I don't necessarily dislike them either, they're just not something I go out of my way to seek out—and I've never been much of a YA reader (Hardy Boys excluded), but my enthusiasm for zombies led me to pick this book up. It has some issues, but overall it was a worthwhile experience.

My biggest issue was how it patterned itself after Romeo & Juliet. The allusions weren't something I was aware of going into the book, but they're so transparent that I couldn't help but pick up on them right away. While the author probably intended to add some heft and “a tale as old as time” dignitas to his story by drawing parallels between it and one of the most recognized pieces of English literature, Warm Bodies is actually diminished by the association. I bought this book because “zombie love story!” seemed fresh and exciting as a concept, but finding out what I was really holding was “Romeo & Juliet, but with zombies!” was a bit of a let down. It was like the author was telling me to moderate my expectations, saying “Let me level with you, buddy. This is a story you've read many times before, just with a bit of a spin on it.” Romeo & Juliet is such a played out and obvious source of inspiration when writing any kind of romance story that includes obstacles, and the book would've been stronger if Marion had skipped the heavy-handed references and done his own thing. Many plots end up resembling bits of Shakespeare unintentionally, anyway; at this point there's really no need for people to go out of their way to crib from the dead bard.

The romance aspect was so-so. This would've been a very different book had it been written by Clive Barker, but this being a YA novel any squickiness or uncomfortable elements (the interesting stuff) pertaining to a love affair between a human girl and an animated corpse are hand-waved away and/or presented in a sanitized manner. Characterization was likewise a little sleight. It was difficult to understand R's infatuation with Julie, apart from what she symbolized (i.e., vibrant life in a dead, gray world). She was spunky and resilient, but her gal-pal Nora seemed like more fun. Perhaps the attraction can be chalked up to some lingering chemical reaction left over from when R eats Julie's ex-boyfriend's brain. Likewise, it was a little hard to see why she was so interested in R (a dead guy who killed and ate a bunch of her friends), apart from him acting protective and paying over the requisite number of niceness tokens.

While a flimsy, not-quite-believable romance would seem pretty harmful in a book billed as a love story, fortunately the novel shines in other areas. Protagonist “R” and his undead associates are remarkably highly functioning zombies, and their culture is fascinating. While I'm usually a Romero purist when it comes to the presentation of zombies, I liked the idea that zombies could communicate with each other and had their own customs, and that the living were just too preoccupied with fear to notice. The human survivors' post-apocalyptic lifestyle is interesting as well, albeit rendered in less detail. The first person narrative was a high point as well. I enjoyed seeing the world through the eyes of a zombie.

Postscript: Apparently the author is working on both a prequel and a sequel to this novel. While that seems like a wise commercial choice, I'm not quite sure I'll want to pick up either. The zombie/survivor conflict in Warm Bodies was exciting, but given the book's conclusion it's difficult to see what more could be done with it. We'll see.

★★★☆☆

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