Title: The Girl With All the Gifts

Author: M.R. Carey

Format: Mass Market Paperback

Publication Date: November 13, 2018

Number of Pages: 450

Publisher: Orbit

Genre: Thriller, Sci-Fi, Horror

Synopsis:

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.”

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children’s cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she’ll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn’t know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

Personal Thoughts:

Rating:

I can’t say that I am an avid fan of zombies, but I do like watching about them. I find the stories intriguing and interesting. I’ve also read a couple of graphic novels about zombies, some of them I loved and some were just okay. This book caught my attention because the main protagonist is a child and I am intrigued by how the plot would move forward. One of my internet friends loved it, so I decided to also give it a try.

Within the first few chapters, it was explained why Melanie is special amongst her classmates. She’s the most intelligent in her class and all the adults knew about it. It started out very nice and interesting, it was such a page-turner up until we got to the middle part where they are traversing back to their hometown. Towards that ending, it all felt very dragging and the info dump was too much for me. There were so many technical terms thrown by Dr. Caldwell and it was all so confusing.

I loved the characters in the story, though. Especially Melanie, Justineau, and Private Gallagher. They are the core characters in the novel with the addition of Dr. Caldwell. The character development was also good and I absolutely feel the connection with Melanie.

I gave it a three stars because it’s still really fun to read and I would still recommend it to everyone who’s up for some sci-fi thriller. I guess it just didn’t quite work out for me because it wasn’t as thrilling as my usual thriller reads. Maybe I’ve set the wrong expectations on this one, but you guys should still give it a try if it piques your interest.