Review: Four by Zack Scott

Our Dead Lives #1

Publisher: Shades of Grey Publishing

Publication Date: June 28th, 2011

Rating: 4 Stars

Source: Review copy from the author

Pages: 528

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Summary (from Goodreads):

A tragic past. A destined reunion. A decaying hope.

In Southern California, four friends must face a haunting nightmare from high school in order to save the future of humanity. But will their personal conflicts get in the way? Battling for survival, these fated four will choose whether to follow a destined path or continue their dead lives, while the zombie apocalypse feeds them one cliche after another.

Alec, Scot, Kale, and Jeff are four previously best friends. They drifted apart after a rather traumatic event in their lives and eight years later, they are having a reunion. The reunion doesn't go well considering three of the friends generally seem to just not like each other and the glue that tries to hold them all together, Jeff, is late. He is on a mission with the Vault Tactical Force to go open the Vaults. The Vaults are obviously vaults that were built to withstand an apocalypse. Only a few lucky people won spots in the Vaults and the apocalypse never came. The people have been stuck inside the vaults for six months when Jeff and his team come to let them out. But what they find inside are not living people, but the undead... And that's where this story begins!

This book was so good. I was scared going into this book because so far, I haven't really liked very many of the books I've been asked to review. But this one was so good and I was so pleasantly surprised! I got this book in like August to review and I just now read it because I suck so hard, but I shouldn't have waited! It was so good!

First of all, the characters were all so different! You have Jeff who joined I think the Navy after high school and then was recruited to join the Vault Tactical Force. He is the one in his group of friends who tries so hard to get things back to the way they were. He is a really good person and is really brave and cares about everyone. He tries to see the best in everyone.

Alec.. I don't know. I think it's great how he was so committed to his relationship. He and Nicole have a cute relationship and she is basically his reason for being and his whole world. Which is great and all, but I feel like in this story, his relationship just kind of makes him into an ass. He comes off as very clingy and won't leave Nicole for anything!

Scot is the ladies man of the group. He royally screwed things up with the girl of his dreams and spends a lot of this book trying to fix things with her. He strikes me as that guy you know who is kind of purposefully always acting like a douchebag, but really he's got a good head on his shoulders and has good intentions. I don't know, I think that he was probably my favorite of the four friends.

Okay, now the last friend is Kale. What do I think of Kale? He doesn't really seem to think things through before he acts. Even if his action is in the best interest of everyone else, it doesn't really seem to go well for him. I don't know, I think that Kale is the friend I thought the least about during this book, but he is not my least favorite. He just kinda got the short end of the stick, I think.

There are a lot of other characters who play decently important-ish parts in this book. There are the girls with their group, Kelsey, Nicole, and Sadie. Sadie weirded me out. She kind of creates her own religion/diety and talks to it throughout the book. That weirded me out mostly because I knew a kid like that in high school and he said goblins followed him through the halls... ANYWAYS! I liked the other girls. There's a few other characters you hear a lot from in this book, but I feel like these are the main main characters.

There is romance in the book. Mostly it was discussed above. I didn't like Alec's relationship just because of how he acted about it. Scot's relationship with his girl, I did like. I was pretty excited because I have been trying to pick out books where there are some steamy-ish moments and I have been failing MISERABLY!!! And this book delivered that to me and I liked that.

The plot of this book is fantastic! There is never a dull moment during the zombie apocalypse! They all move around a lot, things are always happening. There are a lot of flashback moments to the traumatic event that happened eight years ago and that switched things up a bit which was nice. 

If I had to make any complaints about this book, I would complain about the number of points of view. There are like six at least. That in general is something that I don't care for, but it didn't even really seem that bad in this book. Also, it kinda felt long.

Overall, I would recommend this book to fans of zombies and The Walking Dead. It was a really interesting book and my biggest regret is not getting to it sooner! If you happen to dislike violence, profanity, and sex in your books, then this one is probably not for you. I will probably end up reading the sequel someday because I gotta know if they stop the zombie apocalypse or not!