Dead Stay Dead [Paperback]

"The zombies dripped and howled and leaked and exploded..." Grindhouse literature. Zooming in on oozing sores, rotting teeth, and brain juice. DEAD STAY DEAD drops you off in the middle of a zombie apocalypse on a college campus. It's a world you may not escape without becoming one of them. Yeah you'll laugh along the way, but it will be a "soon to be eaten by zombie laugh." DEAD STAY DEAD is best read in one sitting. It's comical homage to b-movie writing that is eerily smooth and fine tuned. The writing is rhythmic, descriptive, and can stand up in any genre. DEAD STAY DEAD is a nice escape to place on your kindle or bookshelf. You need to escape. Escape into this. Probably best if you light up a spliff first.

Dead Stay Dead is a short quick read at 72 pages with a lot of zombie action and dialog. While it was a fun quick read, it's lack of editing was a real distraction that took away from the experience and sometimes feels like only a piece of something larger. While I would agree it does come across as a cross breed of Buffy and Shaun of the Dead as the back cover states, I can't recommend.

I am really glad that someone else besides me has the same idea of how zombies should act. I have always been a person that doesn't mind fast moving zombies, but I also love the slower zombie that travel in hordes. However, I do appreciate it when I get a little of both in a book or movie, and that's what we get with the novella Dead Stay Dead written by Paul Jessup. I always thought it would make sense if fresher zombies could move quickly, while older zombies that are in a more advanced form of decomposition would obviously move slower. We shouldn't have to be restricted to only one type.
Dead Stay Dead takes place on a college campus which is experiencing the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. The story follows three main characters. The focus of the story is a girl named Natasha, or Tasha for short. Tasha has the ability to see ghosts, which is a very useful ability as the story progresses. We also follow her roommate Melissa who is mostly in the story to add comic relief. Shortly into the story, the girls come across a young man they simply call Lettuce Head. At first, the only thing on their mind is survival. However, when Tasha is visited by the ghost of a deceased student, survival is not their main objective, stopping the zombie outbreak is.
Dead Stay Dead is a lot of fun to read. The book has a lot of funny dialog. I am not one that typically likes humor mixed with my horror. I think the reason I usually don't like humor mixed in with horror is because a lot of horror relies on tension, and when that tension is relieved, you aren't left with much. I think Dead Stay Dead is more of a comedy than a zombie horror but there are enough elements of both to make it enjoyable. If I were to try to compare this to something a lot of people would relate to, I would say think of this book as Buffy the Vampire Slayer with zombies, not vampires. That's pretty high praise as far as I'm concerned.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this novella a 6.5. It is a short book coming in at 82 pages, so it is a quick read, which is good for people that don't have a lot of time to sink into a book. It is also a good book for avid readers like me, since it could be a nice palette cleanser in between longer books.