The Girl in a Cafe

Zombies. I don’t like them, in whatever shape or form they come. Call them something different, I still won’t like it. Which is why I wasn’t as captivated with Reboot as I originally thought I’d be. Okay, so it took me a while to cotton on (before reading) that Reboots were initially another name for zombie children, which is probably why I was interested in the first place. Unfortunately, Reboot was just a novel with an interesting premise that came out flat for me. When I did click on with the zombies’ thing, I thought that at least with such an inventive way of setting yourself apart from the generalised zombie trope, the book would be promising. Combined with the dystopian element that, despite the abundance of dystopic fiction in the YA market, I still love, I was raring to go. However, despite the hype, and the comparisons to Divergent that I still don’t get (Zombies and factions, hmmm….), I wasn’t as impressed as much as I knew my fellow bloggers were.So you know that I liked it. Just liked it. I liked the plot. I liked the background behind it. I liked the scifi element of kids being kept at a base and were trained to be killers. Very Dark Angel. I liked that it wasn’t just another zombie novel. I especially liked the way that the author dropped us straight into the action. I liked the idea that the humans were creating some sort of anti virus and testing it on the Reboots. What I didn’t like was that after such an impressive opening, the rest of the novel was lacklustre. I felt like I was just following around a school girl as she went about her mundane life. Wren was probably one of the most contradictory characters I’ve ever read. While I enjoyed this badassery girl that she was revered to be, the way she was crushing on Callum was just a tad bit excessive.And on a side note, for personal reasons, I can never like a character with the name Callum as the main love interest. I know that’s a stupid thing to say, but my younger brother’s name is Calum. So you can see, as I am reading this book, trying to get into Wren’s head….just no. Apparently, Reboots, the longer they were dead for, don’t feel emotions. Wren is supposedly one of the longest dead – 178. She constantly reminds the reader that she doesn’t feel – but as soon as Callum enters the picture, she becomes a simpering mess. She blushes and swoons. But she doesn’t feel emotions, so I couldn’t quite grasp how she was feeling all of this. Where Glitch by Heather Anastasiu stands out by the fact that Zoe, the main character, questions the new feelings and emotions that have surfaced, Reboot just gives the impression that Wren was already capable of emotions. There’s no understanding of her coming to grips with what she’s feeling, which put me off a bit. And Callum was, unfortunately, a bit too wimpy for my liking.In saying all that, there probably will come a time when I will read the sequel, but it won’t be immediately. I’m interested in seeing if more about how the world that Wren lives in came about – something else that frustrated me was the lack of information about what caused the virus. Give me more HARC! Don’t just assume the reader knows what is going on. Overall, this is one novel that needs less romance and more action. On a whole, what could have been a promising novel turned into a bit of a letdown and just left me feeling neutral and reaching for the next book in my TBR pile.