Michele Bardsley

Okay FIRST, I must relay how much I ADORED Molly and her "voice"! She spoke my language dude. And I loved it hardcore!

Molly's in training to become a full fledged necromancer, of the ka heka (Zombie Maker) division.

On her 16th birthday, her boyfriend Rick, takes a nasty fall and DIES. Yeah. Dead as a door nail, instantly. Molly acts in a frenzied panic of "HOLY CRAP!", grabs his soul as its hovering over his body and shoves it back inside him.

Well, this did not turn out as beautifully as she show more had hoped and Rick comes back... Wrong. And that's all I'm going to say about THAT.

Throughout the beginning of Undeadly, we are privy to Necromancer history and different ranks in the Necromancer/Reaper hierarchy. Also how the war between two Gods shaped the modern day. It was super informative and I find myself wondering if it would be inappropriate to teach these "ideas" to my children. Just sayin.

"Most historians agree, however, that it was the Egyptians who perfected the art of raising the dead. No other culture can boast that their zombies built such magnificent monuments."

She works for her father, Big Al, at Big Al's Zomporium, doing awesome zombie related tasks for zombie-keeping people...

"Zombies required care. You had to comb their hair, cut their nails, oil their skin, brush their teeth and give them weather appropriate shoes." - BAHAHAHA! *dies* I love it!!!!

Her grandparents, whom she's never met, show up out of the blue and tell her of their `practically royal' bloodlines among the Necro community and inform her of the enormous responsibility she's about to undertake.

Off to Hogwart's Nekyia Academy she goes... where she'll encounter much to overcome. Especially since Rick followed her there, and he's acting all super creepy... Then people start dying.

I thoroughly enjoyed Undeadly! It wasn't at all what I expected, which was a welcome surprise! Undeadly is awesome, hilarious, suspenseful and intriguing - Molly is a brave, witty and wickedly funny heroine. Rath? Hmmm... I'm seeing potential here! Can't wait to find out more about him and how he came into the Reaping business! show less

As much as I wanted to love Undeadly, the story just fell flat for me. I enjoyed the mythology and didn’t really mind all of the zombies, but I just couldn’t get past the main character and the predictability of the plot.

I actually did like Molly as a main character. She was nice, down-to-earth, & brave. I was a bit put off by the fact that she is the most kick ass reaper to ever exist because, well, that has been done so many times—I could have lived with that though. What really show more bothered me about Molly & kept me from enjoying her narration is the way she talked. There were so many “ho-kays” & “whatevs” that I was just really turned off. I don’t know why she needed to sound like a valley girl, but I just couldn’t stand it. Her sense of urgency is also a bit warped. One of her ghost friends comes to help her out of a bad situation where she could potentially be killed. Most people would be jumping into action & fleeing as fast as possible. Not Molly though, she...wait for it...pees. That’s right, we take a break from all the action for a potty break. Really? I think that was the very lost straw for me as far as Molly goes.


The plot was also pretty predictable. Molly’s real father wasn’t a shock. And the way she puts it all together? No build up whatsoever. The mysterious monster terrorizing the school? Also not a shocker who was responsible for that. You just have to ask, why the heck did it take her so long to put it all together. There is a subtle budding romance, however, that I think will play out nicely as the series progresses and am happy to see that there is at least one aspect of the story that I wasn’t disappointed with.

I like the concept of Undeadly, however, I just can’t get past the way it was executed. Everything from the main character to the plot left me wanting something more, and I think the only thing this series really has going for it is a nice love story that will be developed over time. All in all, Undeadly actually reminded me of House of Night—which is not my favorite series. show less

Go ahead and add I'm the Vampire, That's Why to the growing list of lackluster paranormals that are clogging up bookshelves around the nation. This book is like vampire paranormal goulash - Bardsley just threw plot elements from other vampire series into the pot, and waited to see what would happen.

Bardsley gallups through the setup, where we learn about her alternate reality and her main characters. She's so busy getting to the good stuff she devotes no more than a paragraph to any of the show more following things: (1) The narrator finding out that vampires exist (2) The narrator finding out that she's dead (3) The narrator finding out that she's a vampire (4) The narrator coming to grips with the drinking of blood. The sum total of the narrator's reaction to these things is: Pretty crazy, huh?

Seriously, I don't care about the rules of her alternate reality if I'm not discovering it with the narrator, feeling it with the narrator, really getting involved in the STORY.

Her vampires are basically just superheroes with fangs. They have a laundry list of supernatural powers, they wake up from their Turning extra-gorgeous, and they don't seem to have any kind of noticeable personality change from their earlier, human selves - bloodlust is mild, no hunting instincts. So vampires either volunteer blood to one another, or else they feed off of donor humans, and it's all very civilized.

Jessica's romance with Patrick would be hot...if Bardsley hadn't pretty much spoiled it from the beginning. The reader discovers almost on the first page that Jessica is wearing a very special, very ancient ring and it has been prophesied for thousands of years that whoever next wore this ring is Patrick's soul-mate. Patrick believes in this prophesy, so he's instantly devoted to Jessica; and he's a really (almost tiresomely) nice guy. So there isn't a whole lot of tension to the romance; sure, it makes sense that Jessica needs a few days to think it over, and it sucks that they can't have sex while she thinks; and yes, she ought to wonder how her kids fit into the equation, but there's no real threat to their union, just a frustrating deferral.

What else? Too many characters, introduced too quickly, without enough personality. Over the top evil villains. Jessica pretty much ignores her kids throughout the novel (it's always, "Well, there goes another night without seeing my kids...good thing I know they'r safe!"), characters say and do things at inappropriate times and places (example: Evil Ex Girlfriend interrupts a war room powwow to tell Patrick, out of the blue, "We were good before, we could be again" - don't even Evil Ex Girlfriends have a sense of timing?). A real cop-out at the ending.

Bloodless? Absolutely. show less

I tried so hard to love this book. I blame the cover. I had complete cover love with this book. The cover just drew me in.

But the cover seems dark and mysterious. It seems ominous and seductive.

and this book...was none of those things. The world took me a little bit to get used to. At first she makes it sound like everyone is a Necromancer (or Neco) but that's not true. Then she intro's zombies and Ka and Heka's and...just...some new stuff. And I can handle new and having to buy into souls show more and reapers and all that.

My biggest issue....Molly. She was a lot of slang - she actually said "BTW". Who does that? You can text it, you can write it, but you don't say it.
She was a ton of "Whatevs" (seriously, if I charged her every time she said it, I'd be rich!) and other slang that made her plastic and fake - and not at all the ass kicking Reaper I wanted her to be...

I think Rath said it best when he said ""I think you're immature, irresponsible and ditzy."

Molly made the world hard to get into (because she was such a huge annoying distraction) and hard to care about. And it dashed my high hopes way down. So sad, because I had really wanted to love this book - the cover is just gorgeous show less