Lisa Reviews - Carrie Harris's - "Bad Taste in Boys"

I’ll be the first to admit that because of this cover and because of this title, I assumed this book was going to be about a girl who likes “dating” bad boys. I was excited to see a YA book, where a teenage girl isn’t always perfect, smart and/or shy. I was ready for a girl who plays the field, and who couldn’t care any less what other people thought of her–who was smart, but also willing to have fun and just live life. I thought this book was going to be it.

…but I assumed all of this without ever reading the synopsis.

After finally cracking it open and giving it a read, I realized just how wrong I was. This book is about ZOMBIES!! How crazy?! From now on, I will always read the synopsis and will never just assume something from the title and the cover.

Bad Taste in Boys is about a kind of nerdy girl named Kate, who was invisible before she the football team’s assistant. She’s interested in medical sciences, so she enjoys working with the injured football players, and diagnosing their pains. The popularity aspect just came along with the job.

After a long losing streak, the football team has lost all of its hopes, and team member are losing their confidence in their skills. So the coach asks Kate to give each of the players an injection of an unlabelled drug. Kate knows better than to give anyone any unlabelled drugs, so she explains to the coach that she won’t do it. Why is the coach giving the team these drugs? What are they? Are they steroids?

Kate knows she has to do something about this. But who would believe her without any sort of evidence?

Doing more research, and snooping around, Kate soon discovers that the players are starting to act really strange. The colour of their skin is changing, some of them are getting aggressive, and some aren’t even speaking English any more, but are just groaning instead. …Kate thought steroids were bad…but zombies are much worse…

Obviously this story isn’t what I expected it to be. The characters weren’t memorable, the story was a little bit hard to believe (yes, I know it was about zombies…but still). Maybe it’s because I expected the book to be something completely different, or maybe because I’m too old. But I just didn’t enjoy this one as much as I hoped.

After reading the entire story, I still don’t understand how the cover or the title tie in with the story, or has anything to do with zombies.