Sick by Tom Leveen

Sick by Tom Leveen
Series: N/A
Source: Publisher for review
Publisher: Abrams
Publication Date: October 1, 2013

Breakfast Club meets The Walking Dead as a group of unlikely allies tries to survive a deadly outbreak.

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 was kind of a weird read for me. I went into it expecting this awesome, kick-ass crew of people fighting terrifying zombies that are in lockdown with them. But I didn't really get that, to tell you the truth. While there was zombies, and there was a group of people fighting them, most of the story centers around Brian and his problems with that. I felt like Chad (my personal favorite) would have been a better main character, because he was enlisting, and it seemed like he was doing a lot of the planning/fighting.

But since Brian was the main character, I'll talk about him. I didn't actually particularly care for him. He was so... indecisive. I felt like he didn't really know what he wanted, besides getting his sister safe. Which is a noble cause, yes. But once his sister was safe, it was his ex-girlfriend. It's like he didn't really care who got hurt trying to save "his" stuff. (Which it seems mean to call them stuff, but I'm just trying to make a generalization.)

I tried to like Brian, but... I enjoyed his friend Chad so much more! He was sweet, and even if he was prone to being a total jerk sometimes, it's still obvious that he cares. And I love what they start calling him towards the end... "Ten Ball". Like a billiards (#10 is blue stripe) ball, because of his mohawk. (LOVE THAT)

Now, towards the end, all sorts of things started to get weird. I generally like zombie books (gross, rotting flesh eating monsters chasing people is so me), but... I felt like the zombies were kind of shallow-ish. Their part of the story wasn't as... filled out as I would have liked it to be. Not enough action or grotesque-ness, I guess. And to be honest, I never really understood where this "plague" came from. There was some kind of explanation, but I didn't really get it.

This could have been a lot more dramatic, in my mind. And the ending.. don't even get me started. I thought that the ending would be the clincher-- the thing that solved all of my problems with this book... but it wasn't. All in all, Sick just wasn't the read that I hoped it would be. Chad was the absolute best part... and I can't talk about him right now.