Review: Waiting for Daybreak by Amanda McNeil

Title: Waiting for Daybreak

Author: Amanda McNeil

Release Date: June 4th, 2012

Published by: Amanda McNeil

Read: June 21st, 2012

Pages: 108-eBook

Synopsis:

What is normal?

Frieda has never felt normal. She feels every emotion too strongly and lashes out at herself in punishment. But one day when she stays home from work too depressed to get out of bed, a virus breaks out turning her neighbors into flesh-eating, brain-hungry zombies. As her survival instinct kicks in keeping her safe from the zombies, Frieda can’t help but wonder if she now counts as healthy and normal, or is she still abnormal compared to every other human being who is craving brains?

What I thought:

Frieda is an interesting character, and we first meet her in a bathtub with her surrounded by books, a kitchen knife, and her cat. What could be better than that combo? And the cat’s name is Snuggles, too cute! Frieda also suffers from depression, which makes her feel different from others before the outbreak. She says she suffers from Dissociation once in a while, where she pretty much blacks out and becomes more violent and angry.

Another thing I liked, was that she lived in an apartment. A lot of the zombie books I’ve read center around houses or forts, and so on. But I myself live in an apartment, and it makes me wonder how I could survive if an outbreak happened, so I’m glad for this!

The zombies in this are called the Afflicted, they seem to be almost human with speech at first, but change in a second if they see or hear someone who is living, and then try to kill them and go for the brains to eat. They also seem to be falling apart and oozing grey goo, which was one of the warning signs of someone changing into one.

I won’t give away too much of the story, but Frieda decides to go on a dangerous scavenging to find something for her cat. On the way, she meets Mike, the only guy she’s seen in ages. There’s attraction of course, but they get what they need and head home, him going with her. Mike seems to have his own issues and depression, and he doesn’t talk about his past or what he went through. Something seems to be eating up at him (no pun intended) but we don’t see what he’s thinking until the end.

The ending was a bit of a shocker, I wasn’t expecting that to happen, but I’m glad that Frieda has learned to become strong in a weird world. She starts to like herself, and realizes she can do just about anything.

The one thing that I would have liked for this book, was if it was a little bit longer, gone into Frieda’s struggles with the zombies in the beginning a bit more. Or maybe there being a continuation of Frieda’s journey after this book. Even a novella of how Mike became the way he is would be awesome!

This book is recommended for Zombie fans, there are some sexual scenes and violence, but it’s not over the top which is good. This was a great first debut book for the author.