Bad Taste in Boys

Author: Carrie Harris
Recommended Age: Young Adult
Publisher: Ember
ISBN-10: 0385739699
ISBN-13: 978-0385739696
Year Published: 2012
No. Pages: 208
Genre: Fantasy
Main Character Gender: Female
Read & Reviewed by: Jarrett



Kate Garble is the super smart yet, nerdy student trainer for her high school football team. She wants to be a doctor one day so she does the best she can for the football team by tending to their injuries. One day, Kate walks into the coaches office and finds unlabelled drug vials. Kate's suspicion rises when some of the players act strangely and she learns that the coach is giving them mysterious injections. Soon Mike, one of the football players, is puking black vomit on the hood of her car as she arrives at a party which makes her suspicions grow.

The rest of her party is relatively normal unless you count Mike just dropping "dead" in the middle of the party and when Kate is called to perform first aid on him, he comes back to life and bites off a chunk of her lip. Now there is no doubt in Kate's mind what is really happening. The football players are turning into black, vomiting, flesh-eating zombies. Will Kate be able to find an antidote or will the zombie apocalypse take over the world?
What I like about this novel is that Harris took a fresh approach to the typical zombie story by adding humour at the perfect moments. This was a laugh out loud book. It wasn't like those other zombie stories where it is just non-stop zombie killing, instead, it was more subtle. The plot was actually more intelligent and included more reasoning as to why people were turning into zombies.

Also, what made this novel great was that there was never a dull part, it was action packed and a light, fast read. The main plot was awesome but there were amazing side plots too, like Kate pathetic attempts to impress Aaron, her crush. Harris even made Kate's nerdy little brother Jonah interesting to read about. Usually younger siblings are plot devices used to annoy the main character but this time Jonah put his computer skills to use to help his sister and was part of the main story.

For me, Harris created a perfect, humorous zombie world, I rated this book 10 out of 10 for its humour and for Harris' fast paced, cut to the bone writing style. I recommend this book to all young adults who want a good laugh and a quick read.