Review: Undeadly by Michele Vail

Title: Undeadly
Author: Michele Vail
Series: The Reaper Diaries, #1
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publication Date: November 20, 2012

Synopsis: 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 school that trains the best necromancers in the world. And her personal reaping tutor? Rath. Who seems to hate her guts.

Rath will be watching closely to be sure she completes her first assignment-reaping Rick, the boy who should have died. The boy she still wants to be with. To make matters worse, students at the academy start turning up catatonic, and accusations fly-against Molly. The only way out of this mess? To go through hell. Literally.

Verdict: This book was pretty good, but it had the potential to be great. The story had a strong beginning, starting out with Molly Bartolucci working at her dad's zombie business, Big Al's Zomporium. Yes, you read that correctly, in the world that Michele Vail created, zombies are a basic part of every day life. And there are people called reapers who have the power to either create zombies, deal with ghosts, or do other such reaper activities. The story continues strongly, with Molly describing her crush on a High School senior named Rick and her upcoming 16th Birthday party (Random note- I know she's a teenager, but she said "Whatevs" a little too much and it became slightly annoying). Unfortunately, this is where the story started to slack off a little. It seemed to me that the author was too eager to get to the point and didn't elaborate enough. Basically, Molly gets sent to this school just for reapers and I can't get into it too much without spoiling the story, but she makes new friends far too quickly to be realistic, gets a ghoul named Henry (who I liked very much) for a butler, makes an enemy who hates her completely on sight, and gets a possible love interest named Rath as an independent study teacher. It would have been so easy for me to develop a fictional crush on Rath, since I already liked the idea of him, but the reader isn't given enough details to feel any deep emotional connection to him. The plot was pretty good, but also needed more development because there were certain scenes that jumped too much without any explanation. I don't want to come across like I'm bashing this book, it has so much potential and I really have to give Michele Vail props for the Egyptian mythology she used for her Reapers because that was very clever! Undeadly basically just read like a really good first draft, and with a little tweaking could become a fantastic final draft! Would I recommend it? Maybe. If you're looking for a book to form a deep emotional connection with, then this probably isn't the one for you. But, if you just want a little mindless entertainment, then it definitely serves its purpose. Undeadly also had an ending that was very intriguing, so I will definitely be checking out the sequel once it comes out. :)

Spoilers:
(view spoiler)[These are a few other things from the book that bothered me enough to want to point out, but are definite spoilers.

-In the book, Molly finds out that her dad isn't her biological father. She's hurt, her dad has lied to her, her entire life. It's okay to be upset and take a little time to adjust. But Molly was really cruel to her dad and this really turned me off to the story.

-Molly gets two visions in the form of dreams while at the reaper school. The first one was of a student getting her soul sucked out of her, then turning into stone and shattering. She doesn't really think anything of it, because it was probably just a stress dream, right? Wrong. The next day, she finds out a student was killed. And what does she do? Nothing. She tells no one. Then, she gets another vision about another student meeting the same fate, and she. does. absolutely. nothing. She isn't really affected by seeing the death of two students and not doing anything to try and stop it. That is not normal human behavior and was another huge turn off to the story.]

Rating: 3/5 Stars

-Kristen ♥