Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms
My rating: 4/5 cats
zombie loving!
well, sort of. it’s not the same kind of zombie loving that is in i fucked a zombie horde or anything, but it does involve a type of zombie-ism.
and i’m hoping it’s not considered a spoiler to proclaim what this book is about, because i think it is more interesting than a lot of “zombie” lit, and might turn the head of someone who is not into zombies but is into smalltown romantic suspense with science fiction elements.
or science-fact. because it is about toxoplasma gondii, which is a parasite i covered briefly in this review, but for those of you who didn’t catch it, or don’t own cats, or don’t care about how awesome parasites are, let me give you the skinny, as i understand it with my not-a-scientist brain. toxoplasma gondii’s a little single-celled protozoan that can only reproduce inside of cats. because why the hell not? but so to get INSIDE a cat’s tummy, they first must get inside a rat and take over its brain and make it lose all instinctual fear of cats, to the extent of making the rat believe it is sexually attracted to the cat. NATURE, HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING???
now, when toxoplasma gondii gets into healthy adult humans, it’s usually fine because the immune system does its job and prevents our brains from thinking we are attracted to cats.
usually.
however:
There have been a few studies with humans, too. Some results indicate a strong correlation between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis. According to some studies women with toxoplasmosis are more likely to cheat on their husbands. Men with the parasite have been shown to be more aggressive. Infected humans also have slower reaction times.
and the kicker?? the scariest shit ever?
In the U.S., one in four adults has been infected with t. gondii, but only a small number become ill enough to notice.
so what if, right??? what if the scientific facts were muddled with a little scientific fiction and what if these things got into us and they WERE able to take over our minds. not to make us sexually attracted to cats—that’s a different book altogether, but what if it just made us relentlessly horny, needing to have intercourse with anyone who happened to be around (although disappointingly remaining strictly heteronormative, but happily incest-free), and what if the parasites spread through orgasm, caused its host to fall into a coma and die after infection, but then come back to apparent life as a giant structure controlled by tiny creatures that only want to spread and multiply through boning.
and that’s this story.
it is not monsterotica. it’s not even regular erotica. yes, there are some sex scenes, but they aren’t written in the way they are written in erotic lit. there’s no vocabulary that’ll make you cringe or laugh, depending on your sensibilities, and they aren’t means-to-an-end scenes (where the end is—YOU KNOW), they have actual narrative importance. but at its base, it’s more of an action-book than a sex-book, even though sex is an undeniably important element.
it’s about ashley, stuck in a small town that doesn’t even have a traffic light and a small marriage that has become hopelessly stale. she wakes up in a motel room after an uncharacteristically blackout-drunken evening to find an empty room, evidence that she has cheated on her husband, and a town quarantined after an outbreak of bizarre sexual assaults and a parasite-mad populace.
and shit’s going to get worse.
this is a seven-books-in-one first volume of a series, if that makes sense to you, and it ends at a strong starting place for the next installation.
it’s well-written with a compelling story and a good ratio of questions answered/things still to discover, and it is a welcome spin on zombielit.
and because i haven’t used a picture in a few paragraphs, here:
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