I feel like I'm not really sure what to say about this book because I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. In fact, I didn't have any feelings at all about it other than 'meh'. Apocalypse Yesterday takes part after the zompoc has happened (the hint is in the title) and the humans have won. Life is getting back to normal which is great! Right? Erm.... well not for 'Rip'. During the apocalypse he was a bad ass, zombie killing, gang leader but now he's...... a call centre worker! So it's understandable that Rip would want to go back to the good old times. He convinces his mates to help him to steal a zombie from a government facility so that it can be released into public and the apocalypse can start again. I just couldn't connect with any of the characters, not one of them was likeable and the plot was ridiculous. At one point Rip and his mates were sat around in a bar reminiscing about when they were cool zombie killers and they literally sounded like a bunch of douche bags bragging, making up stories to impress each other, and encouraging each other with idiot ideas whilst getting wasted. I feel like there's a very specific audience for the book rather than it being for any zompoc fan. It has to be a reader that finds those kind of stupid characters entertaining and has the ability to completely go along with a silly plot. It just ended up being an average read for me unfortunately.

Apocalypse Yesterday is a fun, yet frustrating novel that looks at the aftermath of zombie outbreak through the eyes of Rip, a customer service representative who begins to reminisce about his time during the outbreak. Brock Adams' premise is fascinating; he's clearly spent the time thinking what could and would happen in the event of a zombie-like situation. However, Adam's descriptions tend to run wordy, with long comparisons and metaphors dragging down shorter scenes and filling pages with exposition. I enjoyed Apocalypse Yesterday and finished it in a day, but felt it could have been sharper and either shorter or more fleshed out with plot.

It's the first time I've ever read a zombie novel that takes this tack; the humans win. (This isn't a spoiler, it's right there in the summary.) I've never read a novel where the zombies are defeated.

Written in two time periods, this book covers the outbreak, skims loosely over the actual fighting, and covers Rip's desolation afterwards, when things are back to 'normal'. He's suffering a type of PTSD, desperately missing the straightforwardness of life during the outbreak - fight, scavange, kill or be killed - and it drives him towards an unthinkable decision.

I didn't like him, but I don't think I was supposed to. I very much enjoyed the read, although the time skipping was a bit confusing at first. Although each chapter is labeled with it's time period, there are times in the 'current' chapters when he would think about the past for a couple of pages, which always threw me a little bit.

It's a fascinating read and a really interesting concept - how do you go back to normal after something as massive as that? Sadly, I don't feel like Rip was the right character to explore it with, but I did really enjoy the read anyway. I'd love to see more books about other characters in the same situation; there's lots of throwaway bits of background, lots to explore in future novels.

A good read overall.

This…this was not the book I was expecting. I really expected something more lighthearted and comedic given that it’s about a man who was kind of a boss during the zombie apocalypse and is therefore trying to re-start the apocalypse to get back the world in which he felt like he was most alive in. It’s not that book though. There is some serious social commentary going on in this book, which I did appreciate, but it definitely made the read heavier than I anticipated. I would still recommend it but definitely with the caveat of knowing what you’re getting yourself into when you read this. It isn’t lighthearted and it can be very depressing at times. If you enjoy zombie fiction, I would definitely recommend picking this up. It was different from any other zombie book I’ve read, and I definitely appreciated that.

Received via Netgalley. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

My thanks to Crooked Lane, Brock Adams and Netgalley. I can't say I hated this book, because I obviously kept reading it, but...I also didn't like it much. The writing wasn't bad. The dry humor and sarcasm may have been what kept me going. Mostly, I just wanted to see zombie Trump! Yes, no intellect lost in the process. He may have still been trying to figure out the National Park "Yosemite." But, mainly he was trying to leave a message for Netanyahu . "Yo, Semite!"
I liked the book.

I was given a copy of this book for review.

Unlike most zombie stories, this book uses them as a backdrop, not the main storyline. The story starts after rather slow and I felt the characters seemed rather shallow. I did enjoy the wife's reaction to the execution, this was well written. It is a good zombie story and worth reading. The storyline is light and easy to read.

I really wanted a zombie filled action packed book, one that would keep me on the edge of my seat but instead I found a flashback anthology with an uninteresting lead character.

Rip is the kind of character that just needs to grow up and I found it frustrating hearing him moan about everything when he should have been happy to be alive.

I can 100% see what the author is trying to do with the aftermath of the zombie outbreak, giving a new spin on zombie tales but for me, I just wanted zombie action and suspense.

I also found the writing style to be a little unorganised? Sometimes it sounded and read correctly and then another, usually around a dialogue part, it sounded like the author was trying to mimic his young nephew?

I hope this does well but for me it’s just not what I wanted.

This is your typical zombie book but instead of in midst of the chaos, it takes place after the zombie apocalypse as already happened and people are living their normal lives. Taking selfies with zombie hordes, shopping at a grocery store when a zombie walks through the door, portraits of zombies in museums. It's all part of life.

This book, I felt, could have been brilliant – it has the premise of a great story line but fell short in my opinion. We are subjected to various characters entering the story without really learning anything about them, what type of people they are etc. The story felt very random at some points; there is plenty of action but sometimes to the point of not really knowing what was happening. The story never goes into much detail about any of the missions the group embark on and it was difficult to keep up with at times. It felt a little rushed in parts and could have been beefed out a little.

I felt that while the character is portrayed as an adult (40), his thoughts and speech mirrors that of a high-school student. He is very immature at times, and borderline problematic.
He's plainly an a-hole.
Example 1:
“I’m still not learning Mexican,” I say.
“Spanish.”
“What’s the difference?”

That made it an instant bad book for me.

Down the years I have read a fair number of zombie novels and it would be fair to say that comedies are very difficult to pull off. Wracking my brains, I am struggling to remember one single example which was laugh-out-loud funny and although Apocalypse Yesterday had me chuckling, it was offbeat rather than hilarious. Perhaps the zombie comedy works better on screen than on the page with stuff like Zombieland which this was slightly reminiscent of?

The backbone of the story was both clever and original and if you think the zombie story has been retold to death and beyond Apocalypse Yesterday does genuinely bring a fresh spin to it. However, it was let down by its execution which I found to be slightly muddled and a story told over two time periods which too similar. The story starts some months after the end of a zombie apocalypse, main character Rip, is in a fast-food restaurant and is told that if he wants to eat he must put away his machete (which he calls ‘Santana’) as it makes other guests uncomfortable. This is the crux of the story: Rip genuinely misses the now concluded zombie apocalypse and the whole of Apocalypse Yesterday is built around this idea. If he were to go to work without Santana that would truly signify that the boring old humdrum world of a 9-5 working day is truly back to stay.

The two time periods the story is told in are probably between one and two years apart, with the apocalypse lasting about six months before mankind triumphed over the dead. The flashback period was much stronger (and funnier) than the latter taking us back to when Rip encounters and kills his first zombie in a supermarket and then a few neighbours. He amusingly credits Ving Rhames and the Dawn of the Dead remake for his survival and the book is loaded with referential pop-culture references. However, to the knowledgeable horror fan it is also inconsistent, most of the zombies were portrayed as very slow (original Romero style), but there were also fast examples:

“Fast. I forgot how fast they are. Not like the George Romero slouchers; they’re 28 Days later sprinters. This zombie is quicker and stronger than the man could have been in real life.”

In the present day, story Rip’s life is rubbish and spends his time working a job he hates in a Florida call centre responding to customer complaints. He fails to see the relevance of emails bitching about whether the contents of a carton of Pringles is broken when a few months earlier he was swinging Santana killing zombies. This is an important element of the story: Rip was very good at killing zombies, but in the recovered America he is a nobody and has failed to reacclimatise to his old life. This was a great idea, but something was missing, the zombie apocalypse lacked detail and one wondered why Rip missed it so much? Okay, he met a cool woman and defended the Lazy River Waterpark, but apart from that it did not particularly convince. Neither was Rip a hero, in actual fact, he came across as both irritating and self-centred, especially as he dreams of restarting the apocalypse which is the main thrust of the present-day story.

This is not a book to be taken seriously and ultimately it is very stupid, but it does have some very funny moments. Here is one of my favourites featuring a zombie Donald Trump:

“And then there’s Trump. Zombie Trump trudging across the green in his presidential pyjamas. He looks around, bewildered. He stops at the hole and touches the flag. He says uuuurg? And from off-screen comes the sound of a gunshot, and then blood is coming out of his head and he falls. A Secret Service guy comes on-screen and walks up to the body. He fires fourteen more times, empties all the bullets into the zombie president’s motionless body. He looks up smiling, and then he sees the cameraman. ‘Aw, shit’ he says, and he makes the cutting motion, hand across his neck. The blue screen comes back, and then there’s nothing else.”

If you are after some light relief then Apocalypse Yesterday has some laughs and might have you asking about what you might do in a similar apocalypse? Would you hunker down and hide or embrace the destruction head on? Are you destined to become a leader ala ‘Rick Grimes’ from The Walking Dead? Or are you more of a reluctant survivor, in the style of ‘Columbus’ from Zombieland? The great Bill Murray also appears in Zombieland, in Apocalypse Yesterday we have a brief appearance from Jack Nicholson!

Zombie comedies are a tricky beast to get right and Apocalypse Yesterday is a valiant attempt. Interestingly, most of the most successful examples I have come across lean into the realms of YA such as Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies, Paulo Bacigalupi’s Zombie Baseball Beatdown, Hilary McKay’s Undead series or Jeff Hart’s Eat Brains Love. I am sure they are out there, but truly adult examples do seem to be in short supply.

This book is good fun, full of post-post apocalypse blues and midlife crises.
The protagonist is back in his pre zombie apocalypse job in a call center, still carrying his matchete and longing for the good old days of Zombie killing, and simpler life.
The author has a good eye for the comic side of the zombie outbreak and there is a bit of sharp social commentary in between zombie killings.

A refreshing take on the Apocalypse novel, laugh out loud in some places, very addictive & oh so sad it’s done.

It was an interesting idea: what happens after the Apocalypse has happened and you have survived. According to this book it turns back to, relatively, normal. The products mostly come from new Russia who have reaped the benefits of years of practice fighting zombies (who knew they are buried under the ice in northern Siberia? Adds an extra edge to the global warming threat doesn't it?) This was a fun book to read, didn't take me too long and, like I said, the idea is kind of different than most zombie apocalypse books. It tells you about Rip, a survivor from the apocalypse who after 3 months living with the thrill of killing and leading a group of people is now back in his mindnumbing callcenter job and secretly longs back to that time and the Russian woman he fell in love with.

The books switches between then and the events now, which makes the contrast between the feeling of being alive while in survival mode and being stuck in a dead end job all the while feeling like your life is just passing by even bigger. Blood and gore are often mentioned and the writing style is crisp and to the point. For some reason it feels more like a guy book, but as a woman I had fun with it too and I really liked the slightly different approach this time so if you enjoy a zombie apocalypse book every once in a while you might want to look into this one.

***An ARC was provided Netgalley in exchange for an honest review ***