The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R Carey.

Product details;

Publisher: Orbit Books
Genre: Dystopia/Zombie

Paperback, 460 pages

Publication date: June 2014

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Ages: 16+

Synopsis:

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 is a very special girl.

Review:
Okay so just reading that synopsis doesn't it want to make you go out and buy the book and read it, it sounds so gripping and so unputdownable - but let me tell you that you're in for a rude awakening, because although it sounds like a totally awesome book and it sounds so captivating and the type of book that you will just fly through it really isn't in my honest opinion. Now let me just make this clear, I actually like zombie movies, TV shows, and I quite like a lot of horror films, they don’t phase me the way they bother some people. So when I saw that this was the best thriller book of the year, and everyone was hyping it up and saying that it wasn’t for the faint hearted I got pretty excited because I haven’t actually read a thriller book before so I couldn’t wait to start it. But I have to say I was so disappointed by what I read - I was expecting this big thriller story that was going to keep me on the edge of my seat and keep me anticipating the next chapter, and I really thought it would be the type of book that I would literally finish in a couple of days but it took me like a week because I just didn’t want to carry on with it and I didn’t want to even continue reading it. But I battled through and I finished it and even the end was so disappointing and so annoying that I actually hated the book even more. 

So this girl called Melanie who is the main character of the book is a hungry as they call them in the book, except that she thinks and acts like a normal human, she is locked in a cell and is only allowed out if she is strapped to a board and wheeled around to get to her classes - like all the other children in the book. She has feelings, she has emotions and she also has knowledge which is unusual for a zombie of course. She notices two of her classmates leaving the base and going to visit Dr Caldwell, she waits for days upon days for these children to return until it dawns on her that they will probably never return. It then comes to her knowledge that Sergeant Parks has to take Melanie to Dr Caldwell, once arriving in her lab she realises that she has been dissecting the kids and testing them to find out about they’re mutation and to find a cure for them. It turns out that she needs to do these tests on Melanie. Now baring in mind Melanie has grown fond of her teacher Helen and Helen has grown fond of her, so as soon as she realises Melanie has been taken and it about to me tested on she interrupts and saves her, telling Dr Caldwell she get her hands off her. This is where the book gets a little bit exciting because the hungries break through the defences of the base and start mauling at the soldiers and the workers before they try and come for the Melanie, Helen and Dr Caldwell who are all locked in the lab. They escape along with Parks and Kieran who I will admit I was actually really fond of and totally pissed off when he did what he did to him.

So they’re going between houses trying to find refuge before they come across a lab that’s inside basically a motor home called Rosie here is where a lot of the book just goes downhill, nothing much happens, we find out that Dr Caldwell is dying and doesn’t have long to live and she is desperate to find a cure, Melanie finds a house that is full of hungries that have the same senses of knowledge that she does and also Parks and Helen do the dirty business, because why the hell not, they’re gonna die eventually anyway. Eventually Melanie confronts Dr Caldwell and asks her why she’s so special which she explains to her, then Caldwell dies (hallelujah) and then Parks gets munched on and Melanie shoots him as he asks her to, Helen gets knocked out and when she wakes up Melanie is waiting for her with a bunch of other kids as if they’re back in school and then it ends. Which to be honest is a bull shit ending which makes absolutely no sense! 

So let me just start by saying it was a waste of a read and it was not scary in the slightest, I've watched scarier episodes of Supernatural than what that book was. It may be rated for 16 and over but I would say 14 year old could read it, especially the way some video games are now days, you could handle reading about guts and blood, because that’s all that’s mentioned, how is that even scary?! I feel like the book started off good and it had its moments, like he knew how he wanted it to go, and he knew what the end game of the book was going to be but he just didn't know how to end it and the character building was so boring and there was no real character building it was just all so slow and so blah. I mean a lot of people love this book, like A LOT of people but I just wasn't fussed on it at all, and I’m actually really disappointed that I didn't like this as I was so excited for it, and it just sort of didn't have anything happening for me. So again another not so positive review