Play Dead by Ryan Brown

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Cole is the star quarterback on his high school, Texas, football team. They are just about to play for the district title, when a prank played by another school goes awry. The steroid riddled players of their rival team plan a prank that leaves the team decimated, but a local Voodoo practicing fan has just what it takes to bring the boys back for one last shot at the title. This sounds like the worst possible start to a story.

Really…Zombie football players.

Those guys are already mindless! I wasn’t even going to bother reading it, but I’m glad I did. This story is great! It’s exciting (I hate football by the way). The main character is a tough guy, and he has a cool reporter sidekick. This would be a great movie; Varsity Blues meets Dawn of the Dead. The zombies are not comical or scary as much as they are heartbreaking and determined. If you like blood and guts there’s plenty of that too, but this is a book with heart and zombies. It makes a commentary about the world in which it takes place while it entertains you, like all good zombie fiction. I give it two rotting thumbs up. A mist read for zombie fans.


Warning – this is not a clean read – Plenty of cursing and one sexual scene (only a small paragraph but it’s in there). None of this takes away from the book.