BUGGY

Opening Line: “Mere moments after ninety-nine percent of Belfast’s population dropped dead, like wound-down clocks, the silence descended.”

I really liked “Part 1” of Drop Dead Gorgeous and it’s worth 4 stars as the reader is introduced to several random people on any ole Sunday morning in Belfast. Something goes wrong with the world though and a lot of the hungover masses don’t wake up. We follow several others as they witness crashing cars, falling planes and survive train derailments. It seems that 99% of Belfast’s population has just dropped dead.

The set up was really good as we introduced to a bunch of intriguing characters (Star the tattoo artist, an alcoholic stuck in the 70’s radio DJ, Professor Herbert the agoraphobic, teenager Caroline and her crush on a soon to be derailed train and Siobhan shopping with her asshat boyfriend.)

I was initially invested in all these characters unfortunately though as soon as the masses finished dropping dead and the “end of the world” arrived for the survivors the story took on a completely different tone and things got pretty dull.

This never did become the zombie story I had naively been expecting, the dead don’t rise, they just stay where they dropped but they don’t decay either, they are preserved and waiting… We instead follow the politics of “preacher man” and a group of survivors barricaded in a school being governed in military fashion by an ex IRA operative and an RIR soldier. So yeah no problems with them getting along. Star and several others hunker down in the train station and just continue to party. 

I did enjoy that this took place in Ireland, nice to read an end of the world scenario that doesn’t take place in America but ultimately there ended up being too many characters and none of them were at all likeable. The violence factor amps up towards the end and there is some “rising” but not what I expected and by then I just wanted it to be over.

Struggled through this one. The first half is about a 4* read but as soon as the masses finished dropping dead and "the end of the world" arrived for the survivors it got pretty dull. Enjoyed that this took place in Ireland. A ton of characters and none of them very likeable. Ultimately I just wanted this to be over.  ~2.5~