Book Review: The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

17235026Author: M.R. Carey
Release Date: June 19, 2014
Series: 
Genre: Dystopia, Post-Apocalyptic, Horror > Zombies, Science-Fiction
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 460
Publisher: Orbit

Rating: ★★★★★

Blurb:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Review

The Girl With All The Gifts is a beautiful, beautiful book.

The plot is really unique and provides a fresh perspective to the entire zombie apocalypse. The packing was absolutely brilliant and the reveals (both minor and major) were literally breathtaking. This book is really hard to put down.

The characterization is so perfect that I felt like going inside the book and pulling out Melaine from that crazy, crazy world and keep her with me. I mean who cares if she’s a Zombie or not, she’s a child and such a sweet one at that.

The character of Melaine is just so heart-warming that I felt like pulling at my hair when I realized how badly they treated her, and then her reactions and innocent comments make it worst. And then there’s the fact that you can’t actually hate these people to behave a certain way because you know they gotta do what they gotta do to survive.

Jeez, this book is simply epic, and in order to understand its epic-ness you’ll have to read it for yourselves. I generally don’t do a lot of rave reviews, but, trust me, if you’re gonna die tomorrow then make sure that you’ve read this book before your time comes.

If you’re a fan of dystopian and apocalyptic/post-apo. genres, then it’d be a shame if you’d roam the face of this Earth without having read this book. Shame!

The ending literally made me teary-eyed. I mean it was the perfect kind of ending in the most absurd way. It’ll make you smile, it’ll make you cry, it’ll make you cringe, it’ll make you frustrated. It’ll change the way you look at zombies forever. Forever!

If you’ve watched Stranger Things then you’ll be able to see a lot of Eleven’s personality in Melaine and vice verse. When I watched Stranger Things I kept on picturing Melaine the entire time.

If you haven’t read it then I’d highly recommend that you do because it is one book you wouldn’t want to miss. 


You can also read this review at Goodreads.