My Boyfriend is a Monster: I Love Him to Pieces (by Evonne Tsang)

On a whim I picked up a graphic novel from the 80% off shelf at Comicopia with low expectations and a piqued curiosity for something apocalyptic (as always). One of the books I grabbed was My Boyfriend is a Monster: I Love Him to Pieces by Evonne Tsang. This is one in a series of books about girls who love boys lacking some of the qualifications to make them human. Most of these boys are also deadly dangerous and in the case of I love Him to Pieces, deadly contagious. Le Sigh. Dumb bitches live for love.

In I Love Him to Pieces Dicey is a Jock (the only girl on the school baseball team) and Jack Chen (always referred to using his full name) is a nerd. They’re paired up together on a project to raise an egg for health class and end up getting along swimmingly. Jack Chen is awkward and doesn’t have many friends in school. He’s an only child and his parents are always away on business because they’re both scientists. Dicey on the other hand, is popular with a super close relationship with her widowed father and young brother.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because that what the books is about mostly. Page after page of a cutesy, high school relationship in its budding stages. It was well crafted and well drawn and well… if you’re looking for a zombie tale, it’s well boring.

So, against all odds (expect not really at all), Dicey and Jack decide to be a couple and go on a corny date during the school day. They ditch school and take the bus to a park where they hear police and stuff going places… Finally, the zombies!?

Psych, this is where we spend time chatting with their parents and being lame as shit.

So I won’t spoil it but this is like three quarters into the book so it’s not exactly a riveting tale of survival and mayhem.

Final Thoughts on My Boyfriend is a Monster: I Love Him to Pieces [SPOILERS]

  1. I get why this was 80% off. It’s nothing that would call for high demand. A very ordinary tale on both the romance and zombie fronts.
  2. Jack Chen’s parent’s know exactly what caused the zombie outbreak, and how to cure it and it’s totally a non-issue and all the fucks can go back in the box because there was no need to give them.
  3. The characters are kind of stick figures (not because of the art, which is good) in that they’re just very basic outlines of individuals. Jock and Nerd. Jock carries bat all the time, Nerd knows everything about all the things.
  4. This isn’t a BAD book per se. It’s just not a good book or graphic novel or story… I think a middle school girl might like it. It has that simplistic story telling and happy-go-lucky outlook that’s just not realistic for those of us well versed in the apocalyptic fiction.
  5. For 80% off, I Love Him to Pieces was worth a read. It was easy and light and good looking.

Review: After the Ending by Lindsey Fairleigh and Lindsey Pogue

After the Ending by Lindsey Fairleigh and Lindsey Pogue is the first in The Ending Series. A post-apocalyptic book focusing on two women.

The Virus spread. Billions died. The Ending began. We may have survived the apocalypse, but the Virus changed us.

When people started getting sick, “they” thought it was just the flu. My roommate, my boyfriend, my family…they’re all gone now. I got sick too. I should have died with them, but I didn’t. I thought witnessing the human population almost disappear off the face of the earth was the craziest thing I’d ever experience. I was wrong. My name is Dani, I’m twenty-six-years-old, and I survived The Ending.

The Virus changed everything. The world I knew is gone, and life is backwards. We’ve all had to start over. I’m someone else now—broken and changed. Other survivors’ memories and emotions haunt me.

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They invade my mind until I can no longer separate them from my own. I won’t let them consume me. I can’t. My name is Zoe, I’m twenty-six-years-old, and I survived The Ending.

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We’ve been inseparable for most of our lives, and now our friendship is all we have left. The aftermath of the Virus has stranded us on opposite sides of the United States. Trusting strangers, making sacrifices, killing—we’ll do anything to reach one another.

This was, sadly, a bit of a disappointment.

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Keeping the (post-apocalyptic) romance alive

With Valentine’s Day being last week and my post about the Love Machine app going up last Wednesday, I’ve been thinking about love and romance and relationships and all that other sappy stuff. And seriously, it’s hard enough keeping up with the romance now, in the pre-apocalypse, when we still have Hallmark and Godiva chocolates for those moments when we screw up.

It’s going to be really hard in the post apocalypse, when we won’t have any of those romantic crutches to help us out. So what are we to do?

I’m going to move forward from here assuming that you’ve already covered the basics. That is, you’ve found a love interest, you’ve gone on your first date, and you’re maintaining a healthy relationship. If you’re not doing these things, then this post can’t really help you, because chances are you don’t have a romance to keep alive. (Of course, I could be wrong, but that’s the general assumption.)

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Maintaining a healthy relationship post-apocalypse

In most of the western world romantic love is the ideal. From day one we are told it will conquer all, that there is a specific kind of ‘true’ love that overwhelms all obstacles and ensures your safety and happiness. This is a lie. Love exists, but a happy and successful relationship post-apocalypse will need a lot more than just love.  I decided to talk about how to keep yourself- and your relationship- alive and healthy in the hellish future.

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Lets talk for a bit about the sort of love we’re told to expect by the media. This love is wild, dramatic. It happens when two people who seem to really dislike each other meet in a stressful circumstance. Regardless of how incompatible they are, they fall in love, which makes it great. Because that totally works in real life. If you’ve had more than one or two relationships I shouldn’t need to tell you this is nonsense. That kind of ‘love’ rarely lasts, and is rarely healthy or supportive when it does. More to the point, if required to survive, it will get you killed.

Picture this. You are hunting for food. Just you and your lover. Awww. But you disagree on which way to go! Your hollywood-approved belligerent sexual tension means you argue, and snipe at each other over which way to go. You’re distracted- so distracted you don’t hear the threat sneaking up on you. BAM. You’re now slaves to a set of raiders. How could you have solved this? Well, several ways, but for the purposes of this post we’ll talk about the ideal Apocalypse survival relationship skills.

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