Play Dead Book

Nope, not a book for me. It almost felt I was reading a cartoon trying to be edgy. The hero of the book, the chainsmoking brooding quarterback from the rough side of town, and the smart nerdy (pointedly not a virgin) school reporter out for a scoop! The evil opposing team, from the rich neighboring town that stole all of the poor folks from Killington's resources, have all been injecting themselves with some kind of monster Bane like serum. But that is not enough, even though Killington has lost every year, this time they have abovementioned fantastic quarterback and good team, under the coaching of school reporter's dad, who is nursing tragic secret, and not counting on just the steroids to work their magic, they waylay the QB and cut off some fingers.

But he still showed up to the pep rally! So of course the next thing to do is engineer an accident to push the team's bus off a cliff, drowning everyone (they couldn't get thru the windows in their shoulder pads and no one thought to take them off apparently), except for the coach and QB. The old witch lady next door brings back the entire football team, now as soulless ravenous zombies, because she really wants the town to win this year. At no point is this book ever grounded in an actual reality, people in the town are more concerned about the football game being cancelled due to entire team dying than the deaths themselves, and when the team wanders back, obviously grievously injured, shoving raw meat in their mounts, not being able to speak, no one kicks up a fuss.

The team all goes home with their parents, who apparently are also idiots. The cops meanwhile are busy bungling the investigation, but the big game finally, after much zombie wrangling, starts. Besides the raw amount of maiming and brutality, vast amounts of underaged drinking and drugs like out in the open, smoking everywhere, this is another book where practically each page I turned I sighed "That's not how any of this works" again to myself. Felt cliched.