I was unsure about Olivia Dade’s Zomromcom from the moment she shared in her newsletter that this was what she was working on. I’m not, generally speaking, a big paranormal romance person and certainly a book featuring a woman beginning a relationship with a vampire during a zombie attack certainly falls into that category. But I’ve had great experiences with Dade books previously and was willing to give this one a shot; it certainly didn’t hurt that its bright, fun cover qualified for the Purple Bingo Square. 
We begin the story by being dumped into action in progress, and it really hampered my ability to sink into the book initially. Honestly, the same thing happened in last year’s short story All by My Elf. In the world of the book there was a zombie outbreak 20 years previously which had been quelled by a containment zone structure. Edie lives within its most interior border right near the zombies, and as she comes home one evening she sees a rogue zombie – who should in no way be on this side of the wall and moat – about to attack her neighbor, Chad. Except Chad isn’t really the mid-twenties dudebro he has appeared to be for the past three years; he is in fact a very old and powerful vampire named Max who manages to save himself just fine. Following the attack Edie feels it is her responsibility to get word out about the breach, and Max finds himself unwilling to let her do that alone – so they end up pulled into unraveling the conspiracy that is threatening to destroy a two decade peace between the various entities who inhabit the world.
This is my least favorite full-length Dade I’ve read. It wasn’t the paranormal components of the story that pulled me out, it was the very rapid instalove storyline that the structure of the book necessitated (there is after all an active zombie outbreak happening and people are dying off-page throughout) but all action in the book happens in about a week and we fast forward from Edie not knowing Max in any real manner, to acknowledging her physical attraction that has existed, to sleeping together (and him drinking her blood), to love confessions, and plans to be together, to a life-altering denouement for everyone involved. Which is do-able, but you really must layer in the emotional beats expertly, and it didn’t happen here, which is a bummer because Dade is capable of it. This was also hurt by being a single POV story; we are only with Edie. Those emotional growth moments would have been aided by having some Max POV chapters.
Dade does, however, write wonderfully complex characters. Edie and Max each have baggage and traumas that haunt their pasts and influence their actions. When we meet them at the beginning they are both in a sort of stasis, but it isn’t fully revealed until quite late in the book. I laugh whenever I read an Olivia Dade romance, and that was true here as well; her humor hits all the right notes for me. Even when I’m not expecting a laugh, Dade delivers them through her characters who are achingly self-aware, or sometimes not. Which is why I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the next book in the Supernatural Entanglements series to see where the story goes and if picking up immediately after the events of this book fixes some of the issues I had this time.
Bingo Square: Purple. Its got a bright purple Leni Kauffman cover (which reportedly has glow-in-the-dark green parts, but I haven’t managed to make my personal copy glow.)
Bingo #8: Play, Purple, TBR, Diaspora, Culture
Bingo #9: Review, Purple, I, Red, Borrow
Bingo #10: Migrant, Purple, N, Border, White
