What We Left Behind

By: Peter Cawdron

Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly

Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Everyone has a different term for zombies. I call them Zee because that's the term my mother used before she turned, speaking about the whole horde as though it was just one individual. Grammar has no place in the zombie apocalypse....

Hazel is a regular teenager growing up in an irregular world overrun with zombies. She likes music, perfume, freshly baked muffins, and playing her Xbox - everything that no longer exists in the apocalypse.

Raised in the safety of a commune, Hazel rarely sees Zee anymore, except on those occasions when the soldiers demonstrate the importance of a headshot to the kids.

To her horror, circumstances beyond her control lead her outside the barbed wire fence and into a zombie-infested town.

"Five, Four, Three, Two - count your shots, Haze," she says to herself, firing at the oncoming zombie horde. "Don't forget to reload."

©2014 Peter Cawdron (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

An exciting story

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written, and interesting. The characters were well developed. I enjoyed the book.
I was given a copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

Cool!

A zombie triller with a difference. Great fun, then very tragic, then dramatic, then sad, then frustrating teenage stupidity. Bit of a roller coaster really but a rewarding tale!

The audiobook adaptation is top.

A different take on zombies

A different take on zombies. It was interesting to see what could possibly cause a zombie outbreak based on real cases found in nature. There are some tidbits in the story that I think were not reasonable such as the different lengths recovery times of people for injuries but overall I could get by those. The narration by Caitlin Kelly was very well done. I think she pulled off sounding like the story was being told by a teenage girl full of emotions very well. A lot of times female narrators do a bad job with male voice acting by trying to drop their voices way down. Sometimes I find ones that do an excellent job, such as Caitlin. She just adds a bit of "gravel" or something to her voice and it makes it perfect. It doesn't sound fake or forced and detract from the story. She made me feel like I was right there with Hazel and the others.

Loved it!

Love any good zombie book. This one was really well done. Loved the new zombie theories put forth in This book and the explanation at the end.

Very good book

I love the reference to Taxoplasma Gondii. I would love to see a sequel to this book to see how they manage to distribute the warmer to cure the disease. Good character development. An all around good story.

Look't me!!! I loved this zombie book...

Look't me!!! I really, truly listened to a Zombie book... quite possibly my most detested genre, EVER!! Definitely as far off my go-to-list as it was possibleto go! I've been known to not even read a blurb if I saw that the word "Zombie" used! 🤣
So what happened to my my strict "anti-zombie" policy? Well, Peter Cawdron happened! And I haven't found a story by Peter that I haven't liked! I also remembered that I'd read and enjoyed his short story Free Fall, and yes, it was really good and there were zombies in it, well it turns out that Free Fall was the prequel to this amazing story! Yes, this is me saying I loved it!
This is what happens when you mix a coming of age story with an apocalypse and then add Peter Cawdron into the mix. You end up with a plot driven, action packed, bombastic storyline that's also thoughtful. It's about what it means to be human, to have loyalty, and how love makes everything worth the struggle! So why did I give the book 4⭐'s instead of 5? well I felt that the climax was overly long and melodramatic, while all I could do was to sit there screaming (in my head, anyways) "Use Your Eyes and Look Around You, IDIOTS!!!
I loved Caitlin Kelly's performance finding it to be quite brilliant, and a new (to me) voice to be on the lookout for... Now onto book2 in this duology... Yum!
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Great performance

A great twist on the Z apocalypse. A page turned that you want to keep listening to. Nice performance.

ready for the next one

I really enjoyed this book! And in genre it's really hard to find something original, but this story did it. I felt like the zombies origination story in this book was very interesting and believable. I also liked the characters personalities and it felt like a natural evolution of their relationships.