Angel Crawford is a loser

Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.

That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in an horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue—and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.

Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey—just when she's hungriest!

Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat.

Literally.

Angel Crawford was your typical white trash chick with a pill popping addiction living with her alcoholic dad in Lousiana. That is, until she woke up in the hospital after being in a car accident with no memory of what had happened to her. She finds a note addressed to her telling her about a job that she is required to take or she’ll end up dead… thinking this is a note from her parole officer and that she’s being threatened with jail she opts to take the job instead. The job turns out to be a driver for the Coroner’s Office.

Angel starts noticing odd changes like how she’s somehow able to stand the sight of the dead bodies when before the accident she was squeamish from just the sight of blood. She also starts noticing that the bodies have a pleasant scent to them… ’The smell was like chocolate and cookies and biscuits and gravy and everything else that was delicious.’ That’s when she realizes that what was smelled so positively tasty were brains and only zombies ate brains. Bodies start turning up all over town with their heads missing and it begins to look suspiciously like a rogue zombie just trying to get his next meal. Angel thought she had figured out who the killer was when he turns up as the next victim.

Angel was a very realistic character and instantly likeable for me. The story had this underlying sadness with Angel staying off the pills, being able to hold a job, and finally getting her shit together… she just had to die to do it. And between the mysteries of who turned her into a zombie and who was leaving headless bodies all over town, it had me scrabbling to finish just to find out if my guess was right. (I was right! Yay!) The ending was good, (minus the slightly corny part when she kind of OD’d on brains) and I’m looking forward to reading the next one.