Dead End

Dead End Series, Book 1

By: Kady Monroe

Narrated by: Jacqueline Nym

Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Jenny Duncan works the evening shift at the local shop in the town of Lillington in the Midlands, UK. On Guy Fawkes night, during the bonfire celebrations, a virus sweeps through the town. Jenny finds herself trapped with three customers as the infected attack anyone they can find outside.

Then the dead start to rise, the power and communications are cut off, and a fire breaks out in a building nearby. The group of survivors must find a way out if they are to reach their families and safety.

It soon becomes apparent the virus has gone global, and safety is a difficult thing to find. The group must work together if they are to survive.

Dead End is the story of ordinary people living in the UK, with no special skills, trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. This is book one in the Dead End series.

©2017 Kady Monroe (P)2017 Kady Monroe

Loved this story!

This was such a great story! I seem to rarely come across zombie-related stories and after seeing the author about supplying a free copy for an honest review, I leapt for the chance to listen (audiobook).

One area of audiobooks that I question, maybe it's more related to the person(s) who decide which narrator goes with which story is the fact that this story is based in England with English terms, yet the narrator did an American accent. Why? At least get a narrator that can do English accents.

In the end, I loved this story! It held my attention the entire time and I didn't want it to end. When it finally did, it was on a huge cliffhanger, I thought I was going to cry. lol I can't wait for book 2 in this series.

The story:

There was a part when Jenny and Maggie were talking in which Maggie acknowledged she wanted to keep her car because she had nothing left of her previous life. When Jenny questioned her about her still having her daughter, Sophie, Maggie was upset that Sophie hadn't wanted to ride with her, instead choosing the group. Jenny tells her to basically be thankful that Sophie is still alive because Matt has no clue what happened to his father. Wrong! His father was dead, it was his mother whose whereabouts were unknown.

I'm curious as to why the author chose to categorize the "creatures" differently. For example, overall they're zombies, but some are referred to as undead or those infected. That this sentence, for example, there's a time when Jenny says she sees “the dead shambling here..." but it not being as "...bad as Meadow Hills..." and how "...she saw no sign of the infected.” Aren't the dead and infected the same? They're all zombies. Some walk, some run.

The narrator:

While I liked her calm voice, I couldn't help but notice random background noises taking place throughout her reading/narrating of the story. For example, every so often when she'd pause, I assumed she was pausing her narrating program, there'd be a click kind of sound. Additionally, I was she would have done a longer pause between chapters. With how it was performed, she'd read the final sentence of Chapter 1, for example, then automatically say "Chapter 2." Maybe I'm just being too picky. I've listened to many audiobooks and there's usually a longer pause between chapters. Either way, she did pretty good with the variety of voices she supplied in the story.

Pretty Good

Since I'm listening to an audiobook, I'll start with a critique of the narration.

Narration:

Nym's voice is pleasant to listen to. She did a pretty good job, though I'm a bit surprised that a person with such a soft spoken voice was chosen for a zombie book. With that said I'd be happy to listen to other books read by her. The one thing regarding the performance that I would have liked that is no fault of Nym's is a reader with a British accent. I feel like hearing the characters speaking like people from the UK would have made the setting come more alive.

Story:

So far as zombie apocalypse novels go, this is a pretty short book, but it was well presented. If three or four installments were released together as an omnibus, I'd probably buy it. As it is, with only 5-6 hours of play time, we don't go too deep into how the end of civilization changes people in the long term. The idea that corpses are walking is still new to the characters, and even by the end of this story they don't have enough time to become jaded or desensitized to their situation which is true for protagonists in a lot of other ZA books.

This is a good read/listen for what it is. The book seems well edited, and held my attention from start to finish. I just wish there was more of it. Listening to this book is not time wasted.

A couple of times I found one of the characters to be extremely dense but then I considered that she was an addict, and saying whatever she thought she had to to deny responsibility for her addiction. I liked that the protagonists were all more or less normal people, and behaved as such as they were trying to survive. They weren't all readily willing to throw things like concept of law and order out the window at the first sign of zombies. It's only at the end of the book that the PoV protagonists accepts that sometimes they are going to have to do illegal things to survive (in this case stealing gas). When was the last time you saw someone on the Walking Dead worry about that? I like that we get to see the ZA story unfold from the first infections.

I wondering how dark the author can go in subsequent novels because, as I said, everything is still new to the characters in this book and no one seems to be in danger of losing their humanity or starvation (yet). Whether I continue with the series will really depend on how she handles things in the next book or two as the zombie apocalypse drags on, and the characters have to accept that life as they knew is is gone and dad.

Overall, I give this a solid 4 stars.

If you love a greart zombie story..this is perfect

I love the narration and story...starts fast and keeps interesting till the end.I hope this will not be the end of Monroe's zombie stories,we want more

Very Entertaining!

Where does Dead End rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very Good

What did you like best about this story?

This was a very good book. Narration was also very good. Has a story line twist that makes you wonder what will happen next. Looking forward to the next book.

What does Jacqueline Nym bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Suspense

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

The Dead

Dead End is a fun read that won't leave you bored.

What made the experience of listening to Dead End the most enjoyable?

Dead End gets into the action early on and does not let up throughout the book. Kady Monroe does a great job putting a new spin on an otherwise clichéd subject. If you like zombies, you'll love this book. I look forward to seeing more from this author in the future!

What was one of the most memorable moments of Dead End?

The beginning of the story started off with a bang. Monroe didn't waste any time getting the action started

What about Jacqueline Nym’s performance did you like?

The book was very well read. The different voices for each character were very well done. You could easily tell which character was speaking at any time.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Definitely

Thank You for Shambling

Where will you be when the world as you know it ends? In a state of mass crisis will anything still be working? Will you sleep through it all? These are the questions that an unlikely band will need to ask themselves as a reported flu virus is more than what it appears to be.

This book is 'Shaun of the Dead' meets 'The Breakfast Club' as a group of strangers goes from normal life to hiding, running and fighting for their lives. With reactions from panic to outright rejection of the crisis, the group still gets hung up in the details of every day living. While the narrator's performance is without errors, the voice itself does not change much, making normal, exciting, or gruesome moments all feel very similar. This can be good or bad depending on how immersive you like your gore.

This book almost does too good of a job placing the mundane next to the critical and exciting. It will have you shifting gears very rapidly and frequently between shouting in frustration at the characters for their hang ups on normal every day situations, versus heart pounding action scenes where you are shouting at the characters to move faster. The ending leaves many of the group's individual members' goals unexplored, presumably in preparation for and anticipation of a second book.

Good Zombie Read

I enjoyed this zombie story. It's pretty much your basic zombie read, but it has a good story line and kept me interested from beginning to the cliffhanger ending. I did see that this is the first in a series, so I will be looking forward to the next book. The narration was good, I had to speed it up a little, but that's how I listen to most of my audiobooks. The narrator differentiated the voices enough so the listener was not confused.

Not Your Everyday Zombie Book

I was pleased to get a chance to listen to this and it to be in POV of the lead female not a male.
Starts out quick and doesn’t stop till the cliffhanger of an ending. If you get upset with a cliffhanger just keep in mind that the next one is on its way. It takes place in UK and some of the references might come accross as hard to understand but that is nothing to keep you away.
Good suspense that keeps you wanting more.

Good Zombie Story

The plot is really good, kept me wanting to hear more. Narration gets monotone at times but still an enjoyable book.

Good 1st installment

Overall I enjoyed this 1st installment book in this series. It was a bit short, but it kept my interest and had good character development, suspense, and was well written and edited. Here is what I didn't like, the narrator seemed miscast to me. Frequently the tone of what she was reading was not what the character was feeling in the next sentence or two. For example, a sentence "there is no food" would be read as a question when the very next sentence would indicate it was a sad observation. It threw me a couple of times and jarred me out of the story.
This narrator also has the very common problem of using a super annoying whiny voice for "teen girl". Really hard to listen to sometimes. Also the narrator seemed to have a cold when recording this or possibly has a deviated septum. Weird phlegmy sounds on the end of words kept breaking through and was a bit distracting. Not unlistenable or super annoying, but if you are bothered by such things...
The only part of the story I didn't like was the willfully obtuse mother character who seemed to be there just to cause conflict and grind on my last nerve. Kill her off please ;)
For fans of this genre this is absolutely worth giving a shot. There was almost no swearing, no sexism, no racism, no creepy rapey scenes, not very graphic, no politics. YA appropriate but not boring for adults. I will buy the second installment.