Cover Image: Half-Life

Half-Life

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Member Reviews

The premise for this one was more interesting than the execution. I didn't really like or care for any of the characters much -- though I did feel sorry for Griffin. He was in a hard place. Whitney was a bit whiny and I didn't like how he coveted someone else's relationship [Even though cousin November turns out to be the big bad doing horrible things to get her every whim catered to, it still wasn't cool for Whitney to act on his attraction to Griffin the way he did. Everything seemed either shallow or over the top. Your mileage may vary.

Oh, the cover's nice. I think it may be my favorite thing.

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Whitney’s parents lost all their money when their business failed. Now his uncle offers him the opportunity to live with him (rent-free) and work in one of his restaurants. Whitney’s not overjoyed at the prospect but things change when he meets Griffin. He’s hot, acts strangely and keeps alluding to mysterious happenings. And he is the boyfriend of Whitney’s cousin November. She and Whitney never got on and now November seems to be hiding something.

The story starts in the middle of the climax: Whitney, the narrator, finds Griffin seemingly zombified. Then we jump back and get a “How we got here”. In that introductory scene, when Whitney sees zombie!Griffin whose skin is grey and cold, we are informed that despite all this his feet still look very sexy. At this point, I already suspected that the book wouldn’t be for me and the rest of it didn’t prove me wrong.

Half-Life is a rather short novella (about 14k words) and with a main plot about having to defeat an evil witch it doesn’t leave too much space for other things. But if something is advertised as romance I want romance.But I only got two people who were instantly attracted to each other and instead of describing any actual developing feelings beyond that, they just decide they're soulmates and meant to be together.

And then there’s the misogyny. November is the only female character that appears in this book. She’s described as typical feminine in her looks and pursuit but Whitney quickly brands her as fake (“The longer she held onto me, forcing me to inhale her floral scent, the more I sensed she was like the flowers in the urn on the big dining room table - pretty and happy at first but the impression was quick to wear off, a disguise”) and informs us that her singing and dancing is horrible. (Meanwhile Griffin’s “clean male sweat” smells of manly things like “summer rain and pine” and not of girly fake flowers. Yes those are actual quotes). And of course, November is the villain of the story who is behind everything - including things that seemed to be the fault of male characters at first. Her motivation seems to be that she enjoys being evil.

And of course, she’s homophobic and comments at every possible opportunity how disgusting she finds Whitney. Just to make sure that we really don’t like her. You know, in case “evil witch who wants to turn people into zombies” wasn’t enough of a turn-off. I think you should be very careful with including characters that make comments like this fiction. Especially in romance, which is for many a form of escapism where they don’t need to read the same things, enough people in real life still say regularly.

I’m not saying that homophobia should never come up in lgbt-romance. There are books where it does come up and I found it handled well. Because they handled it at all. Characters reacted to comments aimed at them or their friends. Sometimes a character’s prejudice influenced the plot. None of this is the case in Half-Life. November just hurls those slurs around but nobody reacts to them (and as I mentioned, she is evil enough without it). There is absolutely no need for this kind of "homophobia as short-cut to make the character really evil".

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The pacing in this was incredibly fast. I realize it needs to be relatively fast because of the length, but it just felt overly fast to me at many points. The "evil" was a bit too cartoonish, in my opinion, but with the pacing I suppose that's necessary. It's interesting and I wouldn't be opposed to reading a sequel it was just a bit more hectic than my personal preference.

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very short story. It is a great story but too short. It will be good if Gregory can expend it a little bit.

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half-life finds whitney abbott moving to window, maine to work in his uncle robert's restaurant. when he gets there things are...off. when he crosses paths with griffin, his cousin november's boyfriend, he feels a connection. but he shouldn't. his whole life his cousin has been evil.

and the more time he's in the house, the more he realizes that there is definitely something strange going on and that november is at the center of it. there's witchcraft and zombies and compulsion at work, and somehow whitney is immune to it. it's up to him to save griffin.

this is a quick read, basically a short story, so don't expect in-depth character growth, but it's enjoyable and the tension and suspense builds up to a nice crescendo.

**half-life will publish january 21, 2019. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/ninestar press in exchange for my honest review.

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Short, fast paced with an abstract feeling. Zombies but not quite zombies. Whitney and Griff were sweet.

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