Kathy Hamilton 
First of all, I will admit I only heard about this book because of the film adaptation. The adverts have been everywhere recently and they sparked my attention, first because they chose a Black Keys song as a theme tune and secondly because it seemed like such a thoroughly interesting take on the zombie craze.
I went into this book with high expectations, the film looked intriguing and I want to see it, but I wanted to be able to read the book free from any bar to my imagination. The thing is, and I didn’t want to say this, I was disappointed by this book. This wasn’t an instant realisation, it was something that crept up on me slowly. “Warm Bodies” starts really well, I liked the directness of R’s narrative voice, the gaps in his memory and the timelessness of the plot setting. After this, however, it just started to drag a bit. So much more time could have been dedicated to the action which almost felt tagged on, even focusing on Julie (the love interest) a little bit more would have been nice as she was quite flat to me. I felt like almost three quarters of “Warm Bodies” was an introduction and that Marion had run out of time to do the rest of the plot justice.
This makes me really sad. There was so much potential for “Warm Bodies” to be truly excellent. It wouldn’t even have taken much more for my opinion to have been changed. The ideas are all there, but a little bit more expansion would have been greatly appreciated by me. Visually this book is great, I enjoyed the excerpts from Gray’s Anatomy that replace the chapter headers and I really loved the simplicity of the front cover, but the graphics didn’t stop me getting frustrated with the book’s limitations. I can’t say much more about what details I’d like to change without giving away major spoilers, so I’ll stop there.
So “Warm Bodies” was close, but not quite brilliant for me. My sister has heard rumours that there is a sequel in the works, and if this proves to be true then perhaps I will re-evaluate the merits of this book, until then I get’s a decided “Oh Well” from me!
I’m still looking forward to the film though, like the book I think there is so much potential to make something really original, and the cast seems well chosen; Nicholas Hoult is “R” and I think he’ll make something good out of this role. What do you think? Have/Are you going to read this book? Or will you just see the film? Choices, choices!
