Mini Review: Sick by Tom Leveen

Title: Sick 
Author: Tom Leveen (Twitter)
Publisher: Abrams
Publish Date: October 1, 2013
Genre: YA, Horror
Pages: 288
Source: Publisher

Brian and his friends are not part of the cool crowd. They’re the misfits and the troublemakers—the ones who jump their high school’s fence to skip class regularly. So when a deadly virus breaks out, they’re the only ones with a chance of surviving.

The virus turns Brian’s classmates and teachers into bloodthirsty attackers who don’t die easily. The whole school goes on lockdown, but Brian and his best friend, Chad, are safe (and stuck) in the theater department—far from Brian’s sister, Kenzie, and his ex-girlfriend with a panic attack problem, Laura. Brian and Chad, along with some of the theater kids Brian had never given the time of day before, decide to find the girls and bring them to the safety of the theater. But it won’t be easy, and it will test everything they thought they knew about themselves and their classmates.

Sick embodies everything that pop culture is completely fascinated by these days, which is a huge plus for the author of this one-of-a-kind story, Tom Leveen. As a reader, I love the idea of different lifestyles and cliques being forced into unimaginable circumstances together and challenged to either get along and overcome the obstacles, or simply fall to pieces. I also love zombies. I don't even need to elaborate upon that because it's truly the highlight of this novel. Sick doesn't hesitate to show readers the true, gruesome and gory nature of zombies, which is too often watered down in YA fiction.

Sick is marketed to readers as "The Breakfast Club meets The Walking Dead." I urge readers not to put too much stock in this tagline. Here's the thing. This book might actually have met audiences better without that because, going in, we expect the charm and ingenue of misfits uniting to soar through the story. Unfortunately, we're offered a high-stakes and highly implausible relationship that actually took away from the story. Had we simply been left with misfits dealing with a new-age type of zombie (for the record, they sparkle, and that bothers me), Sick might have succeeded.

While overall well-written, I felt a bit cheated by Sick. I expected one thing and was give something almost entirely different. The author's writing is solid, but the plot and the romance really detracted from the story for me. I give it a 3 out 5, and I recommend it to fans of YA, especially those who enjoy horror and zombies. 

I received this book free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.