This book is not what I expected when I started reading it. I expected a sullen teenager learning how to hunt and kill Zombies, an action packed adventure with (bloody) fights, maybe a bit of brotherly bonding and life & death situations. And yes, I got all of this. But I got a lot more. I got a book, characters, who show in very simple ways how human nature works. How we don't react to things that don't concern us directly. How we close our eyes and pretend things are not there just because we don't (want to) see and hear them. How we, as soon as we are safe, stop reaching for more, stop reclaiming what once was there and succumb to (religious and/or irrational) superstition. How we stay in our daily routine, caught in fear, and don't try to change it.

But, not all of us. There are always people who don't close their eyes. Who fight for change to the better and won't give up. Who realise that the next generation will change things that the current generation is too afraid to change and help them to do it. That there are people who do the job nobody else wants to do. Who show that you can get the job done without being cruel, malicious and plain evil.

All this I got reading about Benny and Tom Imura, brothers who survived First Night of the Zombie apocalypse and all the nights and days that followed, and their friends (and enemies) making a living and living in a world in which Zombies won the fight (for now).

I really liked Benny from the first page on. He's a very likable character and I can understand from where he comes from - his hate of the Zombies, his "hate" of his brother, his motivation not to go into the family business and why, in the end, he goes in the family business. I enjoyed very much to see and discover this world through his eyes and grow with him when Tom showed him how the world runs and what he does and how he does it.

Tom? I love him. The way he shows Benny how the world really works and that what they have in Mountainside is not perfect and how he does his job. How he guides Benny through the transition of "innocent teenager" to "grown up too fast" - even though a part of me wishes that that hadn't been necessary. :(

Nix is a wonderful character. Keeping a book about everything they know about Zombies and having ideas about how not and not wanting to live in fear all the time, having dreams of better times and inspiring Benny. Wonderful.

Lilah? Wow. Surviving what she had survived and coming out, well not whole and healthy, but at least almost sane? Wow. I love how kickass she is and that it's shown that growing up as she did doesn't mean that she is stupid or uneducated and so on.

A very big bonus for me was that the main characters, Benny and Tom, were POC (in Benny's case half Japanese and Irish (?) and Tom Japanese). Also, a few of the supporting characters (even if they were only there for a short scene) were POC. It's great to see this.

The story itself was very engaging and I very much enjoyed to dive into this world and accompany Tom, Benny and his friends for this glimpse into their lives. It's been interesting to see how people adapted and invented things and methods to survive in this world. There are moments to laugh, moments to grief, moments to sob, moments to be angry, moments that broke me a bit (*glares at the epilogue*) and all the moments to think.

Because, in the end, the question is still there - who is the monster? The living dead or the living? This question everybody has to answer for themselves - in regard to this book and to the Real World.