Review: The Girl With All the Gifts

April 17, 2018     laurathebibliophile     Book review

Review: The Girl With All the GiftsThe Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
Published by Orbit on June 10, 2014
Pages: 407
Goodreads

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.

The Girl with All the Gifts is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin, and Neil Gaiman.

SPOILERS

If you are into sci-fi, or adventures, or horror, or multiple POV… read this book. I originally started the audiobook without reading a long description. I thought I was in for some light magical realism, but wow. I was not.

I listened to this book in my car back when I had a longer drive to work, and something was off from the very beginning, but I was NOT expecting that something to be that Melanie was a zombie child. When it finally hit me, I was driving through a storm on my way home, and I had to turn it off and think back to all the little clues I had glossed over.

This is genuinely one of the best zombie novels I have ever read, and I have read possibly too many (Just kidding–it’s not possible to read to many zombie novels) and even written one. I love the premise and the fact that these children are the next step in evolution. For a while there, I thought maybe they were just dying more slowly, but that was luckily not the case. I can’t wait to read the sequel, and I’m kind of glad I missed this book when it first came out so I didn’t have to wait for it.

The relationship between Melanie and her teacher is one of those inexplicable bonds that makes everything else fall into place. The rest of the book doesn’t work without it. The whole cast of characters felt deeply real, and I ended up yelling at the characters more than once as though they could hear me.

I give this book five nuts, because there is literally nothing I would change, and I haven’t read a single book like it.

From my bookshelf (and car) to yours,

Laura

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.