Run! A YA Zombie Apocalypse Novel Review

Run, the first book in this YA zombie apocalypse novel trilogy by Gabby Tye, is a turn-the-page thriller.

How Did I Get a Zombie Book???

I don’t read horror novels. Ever. Also, I don’t ever watch horror movies. This is not my genre. However, while at Huggs-Epigram Coffee Bookshop in downtown Singapore this week, Alex, a trusty manager there guided me to this Young Adult novel.

This was after I already had a stack of books by Singaporean authors picked out for myself. When I told Alex I had kids, we started looking for them too.

Run sounded like something my nine-year-old boy might like since he loved The Hunger Games trilogy. So I decided to give it a chance.

Which means I had to read it first to make sure it was OK for him. I devoured it. Maybe not the best word to use here since the zombie-like adults in this YA novel are called the Eaters. Ewww!

I Don’t Do Zombie

I realized as I was flying through this easy read that I have never read a zombie novel before. And I was reminded of Night of the Living the Dead from 1968, the ONLY zombie movie I’ve ever watched.

I had nightmares for years after watching that one! What was my mom thinking?! My brother had convinced her that it was OK. I was about seven… maybe eight? Talk about traumatic! Anything zombie related has been off my list ever since!

Thankfully this story wasn’t too scary or gory. It was soft zombie. Ha!

YA Writes YA Novel

Remarkably, the author, Gabby Tye, is a young adult herself. This book was published when she was just fourteen years old. Apparently the author gene runs in the family as her sister and mother are also authors!

It was a bit obvious that a young adult wrote this novel, mainly in the simplicity of it. However, because it was a book about teenagers written by a teenager, the dialogue and interactions felt pretty realistic. AKA a little shallow and basic.

Still Intriguing… Buuutttt

The story itself kept me on the edge of my couch. I finished the book in two days and I was so annoyed at the end that I would have to read the next one to find out what happens! And I want to… that’s the bigger point. The story was good enough and intriguing enough that I want to know what happens next.

Now, please keep in mind that this was my first zombie apocalypse novel. So I don’t really have anything to compare it to. If you read lots of novels of this type, you might find it completely crap!

An Interesting Interior

Part of the reason this zombie apocalypse YA novel was so easy to read was that there really weren’t that many words.

This is what the pages inside looked like. I kinda like it when the interior of a book gets artsy. Do you? 

Each chapter was very short… sometimes only two pages. And as you can see in the photo below, the type didn’t cover the entire page. 

In a way, the way it was set up made this a little more fun to read. I easily flipped from page to page to see what was happening next.