Beautiful Dead, Book 1: Jonas

It’s zombie time again, with grief-stricken American teenager Darina discovering that her dead boyfriend Phoenix plus four others from her high school who have died that year are still around, not exactly alive but still capable of delivering powerful embraces. But might Darina be hallucinating and if not, will the zombies allow her to go on living now she knows about their hitherto secret existence? Much is obviously at stake here, and to be fair the author writes quite well, not always able to beat off the clichés that also come crowding back from another land of dead literary forms but still delivering a pacey story with some style. A sequel, with a couple of pages included at the end as a taster, promises more of the same thing. Nothing great, but possibly just the thing for teenagers looking for a quick and easy fix in the imagination before hopefully passing on to something more challenging.