Ashes (Ashes Trilogy #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

Release Date: September 6th, 2011

Publisher: Egmont USA

Pages: 480

Age Group: Young Adult

Format:  ARC

Source:  Book Club/Publisher

Cover Love:  3/5 I don't particularly hate it, but I don't love it either. The symbolism of the rays look good, but I just don't think it's as artistic as the ARC cover. 

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I have never read a zombie book. 

Yeah. I know. I really need to catch up. 

But I thought Ashes was a good start to the zombie world. Well, not only good, but GREAT-there is something about Ilsa J. Bick's writing that intrigued me from the start, and let me say, it captivated me 'till the end. 

Alex is a teenage girl who has a brain tumor, and the doctors tell her it won't be long before she's, well, dead. Hoping to find herself, she backpacks across the Michigan wilderness, hoping to scatter her parent's ashes in Lake Superior, as was her parent's wishes before they died in a helicopter crash. On the way, she meets up with Ellie and Jack, a cynical, eight year old girl and her grandfather. After spending a few minutes with Jack, Alex suddenly finds him choking, blood coming out of his throat and her own head pounding up a storm. Moments later, she realizes that Jack is dead, and that her own sense of smell has come back (the tumor took it away) with heightened properties. 

What Alex finds is that a very powerful electromagnetic pulse has swept through the sky, and it has killed others and than Changed some. These Changed are zombie-like creatures who want nothing but human flesh. As she struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic North America, she teams up with Ellie and a young veteran named Tom, and learns that the Changed are not the only things that plague the ruins of the world.

Ashes is a morbid, thoroughly disgusting, gross, and EPIC tale. Not only is it a modern day survival story like that of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, but it is also a gruesome novel that will make you shiver like The Hunger Games. Alex's experiences are nothing that I would want to go alone, and her own wicked and somber story has a horrific twist to it. And the romance. Don't get me talking about the romance, because I will rant on and on and on for hours. You know those books that have the love triangles that annoy the heck out of you because you're just like: "He's your soulmate. Duh."? Well, in here, you're like (or at least I was like) "Fall in love with both of them!" Even thought that would make Alex a polyandrist. 

And the realism behind everything-I could totally tell that the author knew most of (if not everything,) she was talking about. She's a child psychiatrist, a wanna be surgeon, and a former Air Force Major. I really want to meet this lady. 

Reading this chilled me to the bone, and made me shed a few tears, which I usually don't do. Just don't read this at night, or you'll be waiting for the Changed to peek around your bedroom door....