I have to say that this was surprisingly good and funny. I won’t lie though, hearing about a zombie eating brains and killing people after a while did start to make me feel a bit squeamish, but I thought Kenemore did a great job with showing a world that has to deal with a sudden zombie outbreak and how terrible the humans and government were in the aftermath. The ending though gives you a clue about what happens next. The only reason why I did give this four stars though is that the book turns into a mystery at one point of and the reveal of who did what to who and why was a letdown. I think that Kenemore should have dropped that whole plot-point, it didn’t really work and I initially was excited about this since I was like, give me zombie Poirot please. Ah well.
Zombie, Ohio is the first book in the Zombie trilogy that Kenemore wrote. This first book follows Peter Mellor. He’s a college professor living in Ohio and wakes up after a car accident and realizes he’s a zombie. He has very little memory of his life, but manages to get back home and finds his best friend who tells him about what has gone on in the world and who he is. Peter’s focus then becomes on getting to his girlfriend’s home while making sure no one realizes he’s a zombie. The book follows Peter as he makes his way back and forth across Ohio as he realizes that humanity is on the way out (in his words) and zombies are the next step in evolution (again, his words).
I honestly that the book honestly allows you to hear about who Peter was before he was a zombie and then of course we follow him as he decides to just give up on humans and is focused on killing everyone he sees that is human (he has a whole rule against killing kids) and starts to build up a huge group of zombies that follow him. Honestly, outside of Peter, no one else is very developed and I think that was on design. Sam and Vanessa are definitely shaped a lot more than the other characters and we have glimpses of them based on Peter’s hazy memories, but everyone else was just stripped down to whether they were male/female, hair color, and body type. And I get it, because as Peter loses himself more and more, why would he care about any of the people he meets. I realized later on that people started having names and more personality after we get to a certain point in the story and of course we have the ending.
The plot is interesting and I think Kenemore did a great job of world-building a known genre here. There’s a lot of thought into how zombies move, why they I’ll eventually fall apart (when it gets warmer and this is one the reasons why The Walking Dead” will forever irk me) that they can’t really talk or move because they have nothing inside them lubing their joints, organs, etc. Peter being a philosophy professor we also get asides here and there about big questions he asks himself when thinking of zombies and humans.
The flow is very good throughout, I liked how the book was broken into three parts and the epilogue.
The setting of Ohio just feels cold and bleak for some time (this takes place during the winter and spring) and again, I love how it’s referenced when it’s getting warmer how many of the zombies just cease to be able to move anymore.
The ending was great I thought, I didn’t like the mystery reveal as I said above, but I thought the epilogue was wonderfully done and you can guess what that means. I am definitely going to check out the second book when I get a moment in a few months.
I read this for Halloween Bingo 2025, “The Undead” square.