Teens Joel and Royal find it hard to ignore that their unlikely friendship might be something more, especially when the forces of nature—and the undead—keep throwing them together, helping them to realize that love does not respect labels. Joel River, a gay junior, and Royal, a popular, apparently straight senior, meet at a creative arts high school in the bayou country of Louisiana. Soon chaos descends, in the form of zombie cheerleaders. As the zombie cheerleaders close in, Joel and Royal must stick together to survive - battling the undead, questioning their own identities, and maybe, just maybe, realizing that love is the most unpredictable force of all. Joel is gay and Royal is not, but does love respect labels? And more importantly—can Joel get his first kiss without being eaten alive?
A YA paranormal romance, Joel River and the Zombie Cheerleaders is 60% romance and 40% paranormal. Sweet and with low-heat, this book is like Heartstopper, only set in New Orleans with zombies and vampires.
Teens Joel and Royal find it hard to ignore that their unlikely friendship might be something more, especially when the forces of nature—and the undead—keep throwing them together, helping them to realize that love does not respect labels. Joel River, a gay junior, and Royal, a popular, apparently straight senior, meet at a creative arts high school in the bayou country of Louisiana. Soon chaos descends, in the form of zombie cheerleaders. As the zombie cheerleaders close in, Joel and Royal must stick together to survive - battling the undead, questioning their own identities, and maybe, just maybe, realizing that love is the most unpredictable force of all. Joel is gay and Royal is not, but does love respect labels? And more importantly—can Joel get his first kiss without being eaten alive?
A YA paranormal romance, Joel River and the Zombie Cheerleaders is 60% romance and 40% paranormal. Sweet and with low-heat, this book is like Heartstopper, only set in New Orleans with zombies and vampires.
The walk from the bus stop in Acadiaville’s town center to his new school was taking longer than Joel thought it would. When he’d mapped it on his phone it’d said it was a fifteen minute walk. Well, that must’ve been based on the pace of an Olympic athlete. An athlete with very long legs and exceptional lung capacity, travelling at a full sprint. Joel’s natural pace was less Olympic athlete and more awkward sloth. With the full backpack he had slung over his shoulders and the large suitcase with one broken wheel he was dragging along behind him, like an unwilling R2D2, his pace was even less impressive. He’d already been walking twenty minutes when the male voice in the GPS on his phone announced in a bored Southern accent that he’d only just reached the halfway point.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Joel shook the phone, as though that would make the GPS come to its senses. ‘You said fifteen minutes!’
He stopped beneath the shade of a massive live-oak tree festooned with Spanish moss, shrugged off the backpack and sat down on his suitcase, needing to rest for a while and catch his breath. This was his third rest break in twenty minutes. Full of stamina he was not. Full of jetlag and exhaustion, oh yes, he sure was.
As far as roadside, middle of nowhere places to rest went, it was a pretty good one. He looked up through the gnarled branches of the tree to the cloudless blue sky above. The shade was a relief from the sun, cool on his shoulders where the backpack straps had cut in and made him sweat. A slight breeze slinked through the shade, making the Spanish moss quiver, and taking the heat out of his face and hands, the only part of him not covered by dark clothing.
It had probably been a mistake to wear black jeans and a black long-sleeve t-shirt on the luggage-laden walk from the bus stop to Acadia Academy. He really should have changed into cooler clothes when he got off the bus. In his defense, he thought it would only be a brief stroll and hadn’t expected it to be so humid, not having ever been to Louisiana before. He also couldn’t have known that the roller on his suitcase would break. It’d jammed just minutes into the walk, just as he passed the town boundary sign that read: ‘Acadiaville, The artistic heart of Cajun Country, population 3000’. Joel figured “artistic” referred to the dozen or so boujee stores gathered around the town’s central square. From what he saw the stores didn’t sell anything practical. It was all art and craft supplies, books, patchwork quilts, crystals, and oat-milk lattes. Not a bag of Cheetos or can of soda in sight.
Once he was sitting down he realized how overheated he was. He used his fingers to comb his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. His scalp was hot and his hair damp from sweat. He bet his face was flushed red as well. Not a good look. Not quite a hot mess, but an over-heated mess, definitely. He lifted his t-shirt to fan his face, looking around to make sure he was completely alone, that no-one was watching. Tall swamp cypress trees crowded the water on both sides of the road here. He looked behind him, where the road curved sharply to the left, and ahead where it curved to the right. This short stretch of road was hidden from view on all sides. No-one could see him here. He knew he was being ridiculous, because he was miles from anything, but after what had happened to him last year he’d been super shy about his body. To the point of never wanting anyone to see any part of it, not even his belly button. Thus the neck to ankle black clothes. The breeze tickled the skin of his exposed stomach but otherwise the t-shirt made a poor fan and didn’t help him cool down much. It was seriously humid, literally swampy.
Now that he was sure he couldn’t be seen, he opened his backpack to check that his most valued, most secret possession was still there. He slipped his hand inside, brushing his fingers against the familiar softness hidden there. The instant he felt it, some tight part of him loosened, like a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. It was still safe, still there. A small voice inside him chastised him for needing this for comfort. But lots of people had ways to give themselves emotional support, right? It wasn’t that weird. He zipped the backpack closed quickly. Some things were too important—and too easy to make fun of—to risk leaving out in the open.
To his left, to his right, ahead of him and behind him were miles of swamp, with the narrow road snaking its way through on the only dry ground – like a long, dusty bridge. The unhelpful GPS voice had called the swamp “Bayou Jeanne”. When Joel Googled it on his first rest break he’d learned that Bayou Jeanne was one of the largest swamps in Louisiana, and the most pristine and untouched. Acadia Academy, his new school, was somewhere in the middle of it.
A bird sang far off in the swamp. It was a song unlike any he’d ever heard before. The birds back home in Australia didn’t sound like that, kind of light and joyful. And he would know. After what happened last year he’d spent months alone in his bedroom, causing his parents to say he needed a hobby. Something to get him outside in the fresh air, and preferably doing some form of exercise. They’d suggested tennis, soccer or basketball. He’d chosen bird watching. He chose it because, for the last year, every time he fainted he heard birdsong. Sometimes he even had dreams of birds when he was passed out. Well, just one bird actually. Always the same bird. A bird he’d never seen before. At first he only did the birdwatching ironically, and to annoy his folks, but after a while he kind of got into it. Part of him hoped that one day the birdwatching would help him figure out why he was hearing birdsong and having dreams of birds whenever he fainted.
Now would be a good time to explain the fainting thing. Joel’s doctor had explained it to his parents like this:
Joel has something called NMH which basically means his blood pressure can suddenly drop due to certain triggers, like when he’s too stressed. That drop in blood pressure makes him feel dizzy or lightheaded, and sometimes he will even faint. It isn’t dangerous if he lies down and lets the blood flow return to normal, but it can be scary and unpredictable.
When Joel had to explain it to anybody he just said “I’m a bit fainty”. He hated how it made him feel fragile, like his own body was a traitor. The breeze picked up a little and he closed his eyes to listen to the strange joyful bird song, using it to settle himself in this unfamiliar place with its swamps, oak trees and Spanish moss. He’d been in Louisiana less than twenty-four hours, flying in to Louis Armstrong International Airport from Australia in the early hours of the morning. He then spent five hours in an uncomfortable seat in the airport arrival lounge forcing himself to stay awake while he waited, first for dawn to come and then for the time his aunt Penn was supposed to pick him up. But that time came and went. He tried to call his aunt but the call wouldn’t go through. After another two hours waiting she still hadn’t turned up so he did an online search and found a bus from the airport to Acadiaville.
Of course, right in line with his luck on the trip so far, the bus was leaving a little under a half hour from then, on the far side of the airport. He’d rushed from one end of the airport to the other, at an extreme pace for him, then across a huge carpark to where the bus was just about to pull out. After some frantic waiving of hands and shouting he was allowed to board. Then he was finally on his way, heading to a new life in a new school. He allowed himself to doze on the bus. That had been a mistake. He’d had another one of the strange, hyper-real dreams he’d been having ever since the terrible thing that’d happened to him the year before.
*** ***
He’d dreamt of a school bus crashed on its side in a swamp, half-swallowed by black water, its yellow paint faded to the color of old bones. In the water near the wreck, a few sad pom-poms floated like clumps of swamp grass. The bus’s windshield was cracked, spider-webbed with a thousand tiny fractures, and behind it in the murky dark, something moved. A rustling, a stirring, a sound like dry leaves whispering together. The doors, twisted and broken, gaped open, and from the darkness within, something was emerging. Skeleton thin, bedraggled, two teenage girls were crawling out of the bus, moving like spiders. Pale, rotten things, streaked with mud and moss, they were clearly dead, and yet they moved. Those two girls emerged first, then three more, and yet more were crawling out behind them, all dressed exactly the same, in cheerleader uniforms.
Joel’s breath caught and his dream-heart pounded. The girls dragged themselves out of the bus, their skirts torn, their smiles frozen and empty. Their hair hung in wet ropes, glistening in the dark moonlight. One of them twisted her head too far to one side, bones popping in a slow, deliberate motion. Another opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out, only a foul gurgle of water.
Beyond the crashed bus and the dead cheerleaders, on a scrap of land barely above the water, a priest stood in the shadow of a ruined, partially-flooded church. His hooded cassock clung to his frame, heavy with damp. His hands were outstretched, his fingers twitching, as if pulling invisible strings; threads of magic that were attached to the dead girls. His eyes burned red in the dark, twin embers set deep in the sockets of a face too pale, too smooth, too still.
The cheerleaders turned in unison, following the direction of the priest’s fingers, their bodies lurching into motion like puppets on unseen threads. The water around the bus rippled as more shapes stirred beneath the surface. Joel tried to move, to run, but the mud had swallowed his feet. The air smelled of rot and rust and something sharp, something electric. He shouted to wake himself up, and the cheerleaders all turned in his direction, their eyes gleaming like dull, wet coins. Joel lurched backward, falling into the slimy water. As he hit the surface with a splash, he was jolted awake, finding himself safe on the bus as it crossed a long bridge on the outskirts of New Orleans.
*** ***
As Joel sat under the live-oak tree on the road to Acadia Academy, he barely remembered the dream. What memory remained he shook off as he listened to the birdsong and enjoyed the breeze. He did feel that these surroundings were helping to ground him. Sitting still and quietly gave him a sense that the first part of the journey was nearly over, that after close to 24 hours travel he had arrived somewhere. This place would be his home now, at least for the next two years while he finished high school. He refused to think about why he was there, why he’d had to leave his home in Australia behind. The awful stuff that had happened at his old school, with Patrick, a boy he thought liked him but then betrayed him. Then the onset of his fainting condition – NMH. The weird visions of birds, and of things that hadn’t happened yet and then did. He pushed all thoughts of that stuff out of his mind. It wasn’t good for him to dwell on all of that.
A splash in the water nearby made his heart jump. His eyes shot open and he bolted to his feet. ‘That better not be an alligator!’ Talking to himself again, something he did embarrassingly often. He hoped it was just an energetic fish but judging by how things were going for him it probably was an alligator, and not some run-of-the-mill alligator either. It would be a truck-sized homicidal reptile with a taste for human flesh. Not just any old human flesh, but boy-flesh – small, lean, perfectly bite-sized sixteen year-old boy flesh. Joel flesh. Another splash sent him staggering back so that he tripped over his suitcase and landed on his butt in the dirt. He scrambled to his feet and bolted to the other side of the road, his heart pounding in his ears. He positioned himself as far away from the murky part of the swamp where the splash had been as possible. He spun on the spot, realizing he was completely surrounded by swamp, possibly truck-sized alligator infested swamp.
‘Calm down, calm down, don’t freak out’. He repeated this to himself a few times as a kind of reassuring chant. It didn’t work. He started to freak out. A wave of hot nausea and dizziness hit him and his knees went weak. The faint sound of birdsong echoed in his ears. He began the breathing exercise his therapist taught him to cope with anxiety. He couldn’t panic. Not here. Not in the middle of nowhere. When he panicked it triggered his condition, NMH, which caused him to black out when stressed or overwhelmed. He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t pass out, not with possibly hundreds of boy-eating alligators lurking nearby. An image flashed in his mind of him passed out on the dirt road, a massive alligator dragging his unconscious boy-body by the ankles into the murky water.
Not. Helping. At. All. Dumb brain and its dumb imagination!
He focused on the breathing exercises. He had to stay conscious. He had to stay on his feet. Bending over, he hung his head low enough so that gravity increased blood flow to his brain, which would help him stay conscious. He grabbed hold of his calves to steady himself and kept a wary eye on the water. He breathed in slowly through his nose, then more slowly out through his mouth. The trick was to make the outbreath a little longer each time, without forcing it too much. His therapist had jokingly called this exercise “the tranquilizer” because it was so good at calming people down. People, yes; awkward, fainty boys, no. Besides, his therapist hadn’t accounted for the truly mountainous anxiety levels triggered by murderous swamp alligators with a hankering for boy-flesh. Joel doubted slow breathing was going to cut it for this particular situation. But what else could he do? He had to stop himself from passing out. He had to. So he hung his head a little lower and concentrated even harder on his breathing. Slowly in, more slowly out. Slowly in, more slowly out. Eyes always on the water.
As the breathing exercise started to work, Joel continued scanning the murky water for signs of alligators, jolted with alarm every time he saw anything vaguely “gator-like” – a floating branch, a clump of Spanish moss drifting along the surface of the water, a twist of vine snagged on some underwater hazard. He’d half convinced himself he’d imagined the splash when he spotted something. About a hundred yards out on the swamp, in a patch of dark water in the shadow of a massive swamp cypress, two eyes were staring at him. He staggered back, because those were not alligator eyes. They were human. Joel peered into the shadow, unconvinced about what he was seeing. A black man, mostly submerged in the murky water except for his eyes and the top of his head. A man staring right at him. But the man didn’t look right. He seemed barely there, sort of hollow and see-through. Like a ghost. Joel’s heart stopped in terror and started up again in a frantic beat.
Joel blinked, wiped his eyes, then closed and opened them again to get them to refocus. He peered into the shadow, hoping he’d been seeing things, that it was a trick of the light. But there he was, staring right back at Joel. They locked eyes. A feeling of sorrow passed over Joel, and then the man faded into the shadow, dissolving like a lump of sugar dropped into warm water. Joel blinked again. Wiped his eyes again. The man was gone, but now there was something else in the water, gliding soundlessly toward him. A massive alligator! It opened its jaws and hiss-growled at Joel. Joel leapt back, stumbled, and landed on his butt in the dirt again. The gator veered away just before it reached the road and headed away, then dove and disappeared into the swampy water.
What. The. Dickens. Was. That.
Was all that a hallucination? Was he losing his mind? Joel’s heart was really racing now. He could feel the pulse of it thumping in his ears. He focused on the breathing exercises again, desperate to stay conscious. He bent over and grabbed hold of his calves to steady himself again, hanging his head low enough so that gravity increased blood flow to his brain.
The sound of tires on the road reached him just as a long, black limousine came round the bend behind him. It pulled to a stop as he straightened up, less anxious and dizzy now thanks to the breathing but still a little dazed and shaky. Was he imagining this? Had a ritzy black limo just pulled to a stop beside him in the middle of the swamp? Or was this some kind of hallucination triggered by his panic? He’d never hallucinated before, that was not a symptom of his condition. But Joel thought anything was possible right now. His mental health was not exactly stellar. He reached out and touched the black window with a dusty finger. Real. Then the window slowly rolled down, revealing a concerned looking middle-aged woman with blonde hair and sapphire blue eyes.
‘This is a strange place for yoga, sugar. You alright?’
Joel blinked. Yoga? What? Oh, the bending over and holding onto the calves thing. The woman was still looking at him with concerned eyes, waiting to know if he was alright. She was elegant, fortyish and intimidatingly rich-looking. Joel replied by nodding a yes, which was not exactly true and also a mistake because the movement of his head triggered a tremor of dizziness. Feeling wobbly, he placed his sweaty hand on the window frame of the sleek limo to steady himself until the dizziness passed.
‘Oh, sugar, I don’t think you are alright.’ The woman’s accent was rich and unusual. Joel knew from his internet searches about Louisiana that this was Creole English, full of French sounds and inflections. She spoke to someone in the front seat.
‘Doreen, collect the young man’s luggage would you, we’re going to give him a ride to the academy.’ Joel didn’t want to get in this limo with a total stranger but couldn’t speak to protest. Too wobbly. The woman turned back to Joel. ‘Doreen’s our driver,’ she explained.
A muscular and immaculately dressed African-American woman got out of the driver’s seat and picked up his luggage, as though it were no heavier than two bags of potato crisps and not the leaden weights he’d needed all his strength to lug this far. Once his bags were sealed in the limo’s trunk, Doreen opened the door for him and the sapphire-eyed woman slid over to let Joel in. He hesitated a moment. She didn’t look like a serial killer who preyed on slightly wobbly teenage boys, nor did Doreen the driver for that matter, but looks can be very deceiving when it comes to serial killers. Wasn’t that their whole modus operandi – looking charming and harmless in order to lure their unsuspecting victims into their evil lairs/windowless white vans? But this was a limo not a windowless white van. Besides, his luggage was already locked in the trunk. He could hardly ask Doreen to haul it all out again. Another loud splash nearby made the decision for him. He scooted into the limo without another thought about being serial murdered.
*** ***
As soon as Joel was inside the limo he discovered the elegant blonde woman was not alone. Before he had time to register the other people in the car, Doreen the driver shut the door behind him with a near silent snap. The limo continued on its way again and Joel took in the other passengers. In the seat opposite was a man, also in his forties, with dark, silver-shot hair. Tall and solidly built, he was wearing a very expensive-looking suit. He smiled at Joel but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. He was emanating tension.
Sitting next to the suited man was the most unbelievably handsome boy Joel had ever seen. He had his face turned away, staring unblinkingly out the window. His eyes were the same sapphire blue as the woman, his mother obviously, but his hair was a warm chestnut color. Unlike his mother’s pale complexion, the boy’s was olive, like a mid-summer tan. About sixteen years old, the boy was tall and strong-looking like the man beside him, his father obviously. Like his father, he emanated the same tension, a seething but bottled up irritation that threatened to erupt at any moment. He was wearing the Acadia Academy uniform with the gold neck tie that only the seniors wore. So, one of Joel’s new schoolmates. Joel supposed there was a red junior tie waiting for him at his Aunt Penn’s place. She was the principal of the academy and had organized his enrolment.
The atmosphere in the limo was so uncomfortable that Joel wished he’d taken his chances with the boy-hungry alligators. He started to feel anxious and panicky again.
‘What’s the matter, sugar?’ the woman with the lovely accent said, sounding worried. ‘You don’t look at all well.’
The handsome boy’s blue eyes darted towards Joel, just for a second, before going back to gazing out the window. That brief glance was enough to set Joel’s heart racing. It should be against the law for a kid to be so breathtakingly handsome. The intimidatingly rich parents stared at him, partly concerned, partly curious. It must seem strange to find an awkward, breathless boy doing what they thought was yoga in the middle of a swamp. Joel felt he had to explain.
‘Oh, I’m … um … fine, I’m … um … sloth!’ He waved his arms about his person indicating he was talking about himself. ‘Um … splash … fell over … alligators!’
He’d shouted “alligators” so loudly that they all jumped, including himself. The tall boy’s lips quirked at the corners. What was that? The beginning of a smile or a sneer? Probably a sneer. What reason would a stunningly good-looking boy have to smile at an awkward Australian kid yelling “alligators” in the back of a limo? A sneer then. Now it was Joel’s turn to be irritated. Great. Just great. First impression with new schoolmate thoroughly wrecked. Good one, Joel. He tried to salvage the situation by waving his hands around and stuttering some more.
‘Sorry,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Not normally like this. Fell over … alligator!’
This. Was. Not. Going. Well.
Internally, Joel cursed the alligator. If that reptile hadn’t made its presence known by splashing about in the murky water, Joel would never have panicked and would not have been in the middle of the road doing his breathing exercises when the limo came along. He also wouldn’t be so breathless and out of sorts now. Yes, it was all the alligator’s fault. That wretched alligator had conspired against him. He started his breathing exercise again to try to calm down. Slowly in through the nose, more slowly out through the mouth.
The handsome kid turned sharply in his seat and practically shouted at him.
‘Do you need an inhaler or something?’ His voice was deep for a kid. Joel’s spine tingled with the low vibration of it.
‘No, no,’ Joel stuttered.
‘Don’t scare the boy,’ the man shot at his son in a thick Creole accent. ‘He’s obviously skittish.’
Skittish? A word that described anxious kittens and hamsters. Could this moment get any worse?
‘But seriously, kid,’ the man said, looking Joel over as if scanning for an injury, ‘are you asthmatic? Do you have medication to … sort all that out?’ He made a gesture in Joel’s general direction, as though Joel’s whole being were some disorder that needed fixing. So, yes, the moment could be worse. It was.
‘Christophe,’ the woman half-whispered to her (probably) husband, as if Joel weren’t sitting right there in the limo beside her and couldn’t hear. ‘You’re making it worse’. She turned to Joel. ‘What’s your name, sugar, let’s get properly introduced.’
‘Joel River.’
‘Pleasure to meet you, Joel, I’m Angeline Dumaine.’
Joel smiled a bit weakly as she gestured at the man opposite.
‘That fellow there is my husband, Christophe Dumaine, and the beautiful boy staring out the window, pretending that none of us exist, is our son, Royal.’
‘Don’t call me beautiful,’ Royal hissed, still facing the window, his breath fogging the dark glass. ‘I’m not a girl.’
‘No doubt about that,’ Mr. Dumaine said. ‘If you were a girl you might have some manners.’
‘Well I’m not, so I don’t.’ Royal rolled his eyes.
Mrs. Dumaine sighed. ‘But honey, boys can be beautiful too, can’t they Joel?’
Oh god. Mrs. Dumaine’s eyes encouraged Joel to agree with her. She had such kind eyes that Joel couldn’t resist.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. Please let that be the end of it.
‘And Royal is beautiful, isn’t he?’
Oh, no, god no. He clamped his mouth shut to prevent it from betraying him again.
‘Isn’t he, Joel?’ Her blue eyes were begging him again, but he resisted, closed his lips tighter. ‘Come on now, Joel,’ she coaxed, ‘tell Royal he’s beautiful. It might lift his sour mood.’
Joel’s heart pounded in his chest. His palms were sweating.
After a seemingly long silence that was probably less than a billionth of a second, a nano-second, she pressed, ‘Well?’
‘Let it go, Angeline,’ Mr. Dumaine said. ‘The kid doesn’t have to say anything. He’s unlikely to have the same grand opinion of our son that you do.’
‘Oh, no, I do,’ Joel blurted out, shocking even himself. ‘Agree, I mean.’ Oh. God. No. Damn it, you dumb traitor mouth!
Mr. and Mrs. Dumaine looked at him, one smiling victoriously (Mrs.), one partly confused, partly amused (Mr.). The other Dumaine in the limo, Royal Dumaine, silent when not shouting about inhalers, turned away from the window and looked straight at Joel. Those blue eyes pierced Joel like lasers; or like the blue rays of twin supernovas, two brilliant stars. Joel couldn’t breathe. Royal stared at him for way longer than a billionth of a second, maybe three or four full seconds, before looking away again without saying a word.
What. Was. That?
The silence in the limo was deafening. If Joel had been alone he would have smacked himself in the forehead for ever having been so foolish to say out loud that he found a boy he’d only just met beautiful – in front of the boy’s parents! What kind of person did that? Joel River, that’s who. He contemplated leaping out of the moving car.
Joel thought he left his nightmares in Australia when he came to New Orleans. Instead, he’s having walking nightmares about zombies, demons, and vampires. The problem is that these nightmares are coming true. Now he has to balance new crushes and zombie cheerleaders while trying to navigate his new life.
JuJu Queen is amazing. Let’s talk about this cover. The cover hooked me. I didn’t even read the blurb 😆. (Come on, you’re not really surprised by this by now?!) I’m a known cover ‘ho and this cover does it for me. This cover is gorgeous. Purple is my favorite color and this shade doesn’t say, “Zombies are coming!” Yet, it says fun camp with zombies. I love zombies. The cover is gorgeous and gets more gorgeous each time I look at it. I have more to say about JuJu Queen, but I’ll get to that later.
Ash Manning introduces us to Joel on a mysterious walk through a swampy area in New Orleans. The tone is set immediately. We get introduced to Joel’s quirks right away. He is mildly obsessed with serial killers (chuckle). Mind you, I grew up on horror films too, so I totally understood Joel’s ticks here. Then there are things that go bump in the night except for Joel this is in broad daylight. We immediately get thrown into the paranormal and fantasy and even we can’t tell what is real.
I love Joel’s inner voice. Though his outer voice is just as funny. I tried to do a deep dive on the character, but unfortunately the author doesn’t have a lot posted about Joel. What we do know is that he suffers from NMH which is often triggered by his anxiety. He suffered a traumatic event that changed his life. He’s also brave, though he definitely doesn’t see himself that way. He thinks he’s run away from his life in Australia and what happened there, but how many kids would fly half-way across the world to start a new life. He flew for over 24 hours, got to the airport and no one was there. He then gets on a bus and then starts walking to get where he needs to go. I don’t know of many adults who would do that. Yes, his dialogue says one thing, but his actions show his true strength.
I think that’s what you need in an unlikely hero. Manning does an incredible job of laying the foundation of who Joel thinks he is from the get-go. While also creating a creepy atmosphere and an immediate love interest who is soooo not interested. Drama, anyone? It makes for cute moments and quite a few laughs.
“I can’t tell her about an imminent zombie attack by text,” she said. “I don’t think that’s good Southern Manners.” (p. 327)
😆😆😆
It’s interesting that the blurb says the book is 60% romance and 40% paranormal. I find the story to be about found family and friendships. The romance does not lead the story. Joel finding himself and forming relationships outside of his comfort zone is at the core of this story. I love Starr. I could totally use a Starr in my life. The energy they bring to Joel is awesome. Their friendship is #friendshipgoals territory. Then we add in Tashi, T.J., and Royale and we have the “Bayou Crew.” I love reading about friend code in books. This crew brings all of the meaning to “I have your back.”
Let’s get back to JuJu Queen and the amazing job they did on the rest of the book. The graphics are beautiful. I loved flipping the page, getting to a new chapter or a new section. The artwork is something you will want to keep. It complements the story and is incredible to look at. This is a beautifully designed book.
I was surprised to find grammatical and spelling errors since the book has been published already. It doesn’t detract from the story; I just wasn’t expecting it.
Joel River and the Zombie Cheerleaders has a diverse cast. It’s not filled with the typical cliques you usually find in academy books. There are kids from across the globe who represent different cultures. Of course, we have a lot of Creole because it is set around New Orleans.
Ash Manning concentrates on the story which is nice. This is a paranormal romance. Yes, there are some dark topics covered, but the focus is on friendships, romance, and giving us the magic we are all there for…oh and zombies. I could have used more zombies (chuckle).
I had no clue that this is a kickoff to a new series, but I’m here for the next one. The story doesn’t leave off on a cliffhanger, but it leaves many strings dangling. I don’t want to give anything away, but this is a story you can geek out on. There is so much to talk about. I can’t wait for the next one. I’ll be back for more of the Bayou Crew.