Review: Eat. Slay. Love by Jesse Petersen

Title: Eat. Slay. Love
Author: Jesse Petersen
Series: Living With The Dead #3
Pages: 272
Publisher: Simon &Schuster
Genre: Post-Apocalypse/Zombie
Source: Library

Goodreads Description:
Sarah and David have survived the zombie apocalypse. They stood side by side and fought the undead, mad scientists, and even bionic monsters until the unthinkable happened. A zombie bite. But not even that could stop them. Now, with a possible cure in hand, they're headed east, looking for a safe zone behind the rumored "Wall." They're feeling pretty optimistic, even when faced with a catty ex-gossip columnist. That is until Dave stops sleeping and breathing... and starts lifting huge objects.
My Review:
After the almost heart-breaking ending of the last book, I was so excited to get started with this one. This series has been such a roller coaster ride...first with hilarity then darkness then horror...all mixed in with love and affection of a couple that has seen each other through the very worst and very best of their lives. I have loved seeing Dave and Sarah change as a couple and as individuals during their journey first from Seattle to the desert, then from the desert to the Midwest Wall.

The first book was straight up hilarious, but each succeeding book gets darker and deals with more serious issues than just superficial couple problems like leaving the toilet seat up and who should cook dinner that night. They've gone from bickering over small things to struggling to deal with their intense love and affection during the zombie apocalypse, battling bionic zombies, and dealing with a military cover-up operation. However, the apocalypse has been going on for months now and it seems like the horde is never ending. I love that you get a look at how survivors deal with the zombie for months. Usually zombie books are about the beginning of an outbreak, or are set so far after an outbreak that people have just always dealt with zombies. This book shows how simply surviving can be exhausting as people become accustomed to the idea that they might be...well...Living with the Dead...for the foreseeable future.

I am in total gushy-couple love with Sarah and Dave. They are just so...good together...it's like that couple in high school that you wanted to hate because they were so happy while everyone else was going bat-shit crazy, but they were just so cute that you loved them instead...Here's my favorite couple-y quote from the book.

Our eyes met and despite the fact that we'd been sniping at each other five seconds earlier, the connection between us was stronger than ever. He just got me. He got my autopilot reaction of going bitchcakes when I got scared, because he knew it was the only way I could function without falling apart. And I got him, too. Every brave, fantastic, awesome inch of him. Even if he was a zombie, he was still my Dave. 

Now that last sentence is a bit misleading and spoilery. If you have read the last book, you know that Dave got bitten in the end and received a type of cure. In this book you get to see the repercussions of that cure and the suspicions and issues that follow. There are a lot of scary and suspenseful moments and your heart breaks about 4 times for certain star crossed lover moments.

The military segments were freaking scary and awesome. The government has contained the breakout of the zombie plague at a wall across the middle of America, now called the Midwest Wall. In an enormous cover-up, all of the people living on the Eastern side of the wall think that there are no survivors. The government doesn't want to risk taking survivors over the wall so that the plague doesn't spread, however...they are keeping the rest of the population in the dark, and killing those survivors who are attempting to get over the wall to safety. They do take interest when they overhear that the survivors have discovered a cure. They end up kidnapping Dave, sure to start running experiments and horrible tests on him...Well, not if Sarah has anything to do with it. She was such a freaking bad ass when she went in to try and rescue Dave. You get to see how very much she has changed on her journey and how strong she has really become.

I give Eat. Slay. Love. 4 out of 5 keys. I think what sets this series apart from all of the other zombie books out there is the humor and dialogue. There are so many one liners and inside jokes that you find yourself laughing on every other page, even despite the darker and more violent themes that are brought up in the later books. There's always something scathing and snarky that comes flying out of Sarah's mouth and something that plays at the dynamics of a normal relationship. Also Petersen manages to incorporate pop-cultural references that really catch the attention of the reader and gives you reasons to like the main characters. I really get a kick out of these books and I really hope there will be more books in this series. As of right now there are no for sure plans to make more books, but no definite endings either. All I can do is keep hoping that the awesomeness will continue.