
Release Date: October 18, 2011
Format: ebook
Pages: 470 (Hardcover)
Source: Library Loan via Overdrive
Genre: YA Steampunk, YA Zombies
Review Date: July 8, 2013
Rating: 2 bookmarks
Synopsis: Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead—or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?
The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria—a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible—until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.
But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead—and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.
In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.
My major gripe would be the 5 different POVs. That really bothered me for some reason. Maybe because the 5 voices weren't different enough for me. I found myself going back a few pages here or there to check out the header of the chapter, indicating whose narrating, My second issue is the slow pace of the book. It took me a long time to get through this book, something like 14 days. I would pick it up, read a half chapter or so, then put it down. I hate when it takes me that long to complete a book. I didn't want to give up because I was hoping that at any moment the book would pick up pace, sadly it didn't happen. I was expecting a lot more.