There is always room in my reading schedule for a book involving zombies, even more so when that book is a fresh and unique undead tale such as The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives by Barbara Truelove. In just a few short pages, Truelove immerses us in a world where our main character is a resurrected influencer cooking for thousands of viewers while also trying to keep it together as a zombie.
Patricia is a reformed zombie. She’s also an influencer—the wholesome, homey, traditional values kind—a career built up with the help of her husband, Ralph. Cooking, shopping, and hanging out with her friends; most days, it’s easy to forget she’s even dead, so long as she takes her antifungal medication. But when a zombie horde starts approaching her fenced community, Patricia comes face to face with memories of an era of her life she thought she’d left behind.
Perhaps life with overbearing Ralph isn’t quite as perfect as she’d hoped, and maybe everyone kind of has the wrong idea about the zombie horde—they’re not frightening, they’re beautiful to Patricia, and they prompt her to embrace her true, authentic self. Unfortunately for Ralph, this involves eating his brain on livestream.
We don’t know exactly how it started, but a zombie apocalypse has happened. However, in this story our characters have the ability to be resurrected and with the help of medication can resume a somewhat normal life as an undead human. Patricia, and her husband Ralph, decide to take this second chance and become social media influencers. I could never imagine I was going to write a sentence like that, but here we are.
Patricia is such a likable character, her husband on the other hand not so much. I honestly don’t think I have hated a characters as much as Ralph in a long time. I was cheering for Patricia the whole time, someone who has gone through hell and got a new chance to make something, but has to deal with the shit from Ralph just infuriated me. Luckily for us readers, as describe in the description of the book, Ralph gets what’s coming to him. I do tend to love a character to hate, so bravo to Truelove on this one.
As a fan of zombie stories, I love how much this one was different than the norm. We have a story the begins many years after the infection to hold, the ability to resurrect, safe cities, and a more normal sense of life. Yes, there is this ever present fear of zombie hordes outside the safe places, but that isn’t the main focus – no the full focus – of the story. Not to mention the perfect amount of dark humor to balance it out. This alone made The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives such a refreshingly new undead tale.
While this could’ve been a longer book, not just a novella, I feel Truelove hit the spots they needed to and landed perfectly for this length. Yes, we could’ve had a bit more character development, flashbacks to the end of it all, and such, but after reading this I don’t feel it would’ve improved the story anymore than it already is. Sometimes stories just need less than 150 pages to be told.
The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives is a fresh, horrifying, and sometimes darkly humorous undead tale. Barbara Truelove somehow manages to pack a ton into this novella without it feeling rushed or missing something. The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives is terrifying, but also surprisingly heartfelt where Truelove brings life into a story of the undead.
The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives hits bookstores everywhere on February 2, 2027 from Tor Nightfire. The audiobook, narrated by Arya Jacobs, is available Libro.fm!
