Persnickety Snark: Review - Zombie Queen of Newbury High / Amanda Ashby

Summary - Quiet, unpopular,non-cheerleading Mia is blissfully happy. She is dating super hot football god Rob, and he actually likes her and asked her to prom! Enter Samantha--cheerleading goddess and miss popularity--who starts making a move for Rob. With prom in a few days, Mia needs to act fast. So she turns to her best friend, Candice, and decides to do a love spell on Rob. Unfortunately, she ends up inflicting a zombie virus onto her whole class, making herself their leader! At first she is flattered that everyone is treating her like a queen. But then zombie hunter hottie Chase explains they are actually fattening her up, because in a few days, Mia will be the first course in their new diet. She's sure she and Chase can figure something out, but she suggests that no one wear white to prom, because things could get very messy.

Review - Amanda Ashby's sophomoric effort is a great, fun read that won't involve a huge amount of thinking but will make you laugh a tonne. It's a great concept that could have quite easily gone the thriller route, instead it follows Mia as she bumbles her way through a real supernatural crisis rather than watching it on TiVO.

Motivated by the thought of losing her five-date-old relationship with dunderhead Rob, Mia accidentally casts a spell that zombifies her classmates. Chaos ensues and so enters the mysterious, wounded and fast thinking Chase. While the events of this novel are fairly predictable, it has a lot of fun with the notion of supernatural drawing upon the protagonist's obsession with Buffy, Angel and the lovely Winchester boys (Supernatural).

The characters, while extremely entertaining, aren't really ever given the chance to develop further. They are swept along with the action packed events and have courtesy characterisitcs but require some more introspection for me to love it.