Issue: February 15, 2010
My So-Called Death.
Jay, Stacey (Author)
Mar 2010. 240 p. Flux, paperback, $9.95. (9780738715438).
 
Tired of vampires and looking for humorous gore? Meet high-school freshman and zombie cheerleader Karen Vera. When Karen falls from the top of a cheerleading pyramid, her father scoops her brains back into her cracked skull and rushes her home rather than to a hospital or morgue. (In Karen’s family, people frequently survive their death and go on to live full and happy lives as zombies.) Karen is sent to DEAD High, a special boarding school where zombie teens take courses such as Zombie Internet Technology and Secrets of Morticians: Foundation and Beyond. Meals consist of different preparations of (animal) brains, with separate lines for raw and cooked. Karen falls for Gavin, the cutest guy in school, but then suspects he is in on an evil plot to murder students and eat their (human) brains, which is emphatically taboo. The plot is swift paced and appropriately wacky, but the real draws are the satirical portrayal of the popular set and the black humor of zombie life. Pop-culture references will date this title, but for right now, it’s a welcome horror spoof.