Book Review: Happy Hour of the Damned

Happy Hour of the Damned

By:  Mark Henry

Publisher:  Kensington Fantasy

Publish Date:  March 2008

Format:  Paperback, pocketbook size 295 pgs

Genre:  Urban Fantasy

Series:  1st book in Amanda Feral series

Recommendation:  Oh Yes! This is full of zombie fun, but you have to have a sense of humor.  Enjoy!

Book Synopsis:
THE THING NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT DYING IS JUST HOW MUCH FUN IT CAN BE.

Alive, ad exec Amanda Feral worked hard to wring enjoyment out of her days.  Now that she's a zombie, it's a different story.  Turns out, Seattle is home to glamorous undead of every description, and Amanda - stylish and impeccably groomed even in the afterlife - is swigging cocktails and living large (so to speak) among its elite.  But there are downsides.  Not being able to stomach anything except alcohol and human flesh, for instance.  And the fact that someone is targeting Seattle's otherworldly inhabitants for their own sinister reasons.

Preying on the undead is seriously uncool.  The only option is for Amanda and her zombie BFF Wendy and gorgeous gay vampire pal Gil to unearth the culprit among the legions of Seattle's bloodsuckers, shapeshifters, reapers, succubi, and demons - before they all meet a fate a lot worse than death...

First Sentence:
Saturday night is all about the Well of Souls - see and be seen is the rule - there is no excuse for an absence, least of all a bad hair day.

My Review and Summary:
Amanda's had a rough life, and it's not held her back one bit.  She's serious about life and a successful partner in an Advertising firm and is serious about life.  Until she smells the stinky breathe of that man in the elevator and has a clumsy accident afterward.  All to find out... she is now a zombie.  So what is a beautiful, successful woman to do now that she is one of the undead?  Why, enjoy life to the fullest!  But first, to find make-up to take care of the pasty pale skin. But when a friend goes missing will Amanda go in search or try to save her drying skin?  Amanda ends up on a mystery case looking into the incidents of what happened to her friends, just to stumble upon a bigger mystery with the pesky mistake zombies showing up in herds at Starbucks.

Amanda is a character I enjoyed.  She is hard, bitchy, and self-centered.  Amanda makes flying leaps at growth in her character in this book.  She makes friends with others similar to her in her manor of thinking.  We learn how Amanda meets each of these characters through their fun incidents in the first section of the book.  Then after we get to know them we find somewhere along the way Amanda has started to worry about them.  And starts to enjoy life.  Amanda and her friends make comments and jokes of things that many might find mean, but it is said in fun with these characters.  I had to chuckle many times with the jokes made and the priorities of the characters.  Oh, and who would want to break into a funeral home?  I loved that scene.

I enjoy the writing style in this book.  Mark Henry uses a unique writing style as we are getting the story from Amanda's view.  There are footnotes sporadically through the book in which Amanda makes comments to add her inner thoughts at the moment.  For me this was fun and a humorous way to get to know Amanda's character a little better.

I will definitely be picking up the second book, Road Trip of the Living Dead.


I purchased this book on my own for read.


This book qualifies for the Horror & Urban Fantasy Reading Challenge hosted by Book Chick City.

Book Chat (7)...Happy Hour of the Damned

We have finished the book and now to our last chat.  I know there are many of you out there that has already read this book.  Please join us!  We would love to hear your thoughts on the book.

So, pour yourself a stiff one and settle down in front of that computer.

Are we ready to chat?  Let's get started...

Do remember there will be spoilers in the comments, and possibly idea spoilers in the questions.

So to get us started we have a few questions.  Please remember and questions you want to chat about or any ideas on the book, just start in the comments.  We will pick up and run with it there. :)

Robyn's Questions:
1.) Did you see that coming with Shane?
2.) I still feel like we should watch out for Elizabeth.  What do you think?
3.) This was only the first book.  What do you think is in store for Amanda in future books?  What questions do you have, that weren't answered?

Melissa's Questions:
1.) Do you think the missing amulet could show up in a future book?  Maybe with a bad guy?  Or a "good" person?
2.) How much do you think Amanda changed from the beginning of the book?
3.) How about the zombie breathe affecting other creatures of the night?  What do you think about that?

Book Chat (7)...Happy Hour of the Damned

Happy Hour is on!  The second chat is open.  Come share your thoughts thus far in the book. 

Are you enjoying Amanda and her dead friends?  What about the story?  Where do you think it will go?  We also have a few more questions to get the chat started.

Come join the chat hosted by Robyn at The Bookoholic Zone this week, CLICK HERE.

Book Chat (7)...Happy Hour of the Damned

So, we have come to our first stop at Happy Hour... of the Damned. :)  Do we need a few drinks to get this chat started?  Let me call the bartender over to help us out and we will get going.

In the mean time if you would like to refresh yourself with our chat breaks, you can check out the schedule HERE.

Robyn, from The Bookoholic Zone, and I have pulled together some questions to start the discussions.  And we have checked in with the author Mark Henry for any chat discussion thoughts on the sections.  He has graciously sent us a few questions as well.

So, now that we have our Happy Hour drinks, are you ready to get chatting?  I'm feeling chatty.  How about you?

Mark's Questions:
1. Is this novel a satire of the urban fantasy genre?
2. What is the author's intent with the footnotes? Are they successful?
3. Amanda is an antiheroine in the strictest sense of the word. Is the reader supposed to like her?
4. What is the point where you realized that this book was NOT like other urban fantasies?
 
Robyn's Questions:
1. Martin seems to be safe right not but for how much longer?
2. If you turned zombie, would you break in and steal make-up? Or would you go all natural?
3. How long do you think she'll stay at her job before people start to wonder?
 
Melissa's Questions:
1.  What do you think happened to Liesl?  And what was in that box?
2.  What do you think of Amanda meeting and making new friends?
3.  Amanda seemed kind of shocked she could do the breathe thing.  What do you think of that?  Will she make another zombie?

Teaser Tuesday (56)

Teaser Tuesday

is a weekly event

Sponsored by MizB of Should be Reading

Here's how it works:

Grab the book you are currently reading (anything at all)

Open the book to any random page.

Share 2 teaser sentences from anywhere on the page

Please Make Sure They Are Not Spoilers!

(Don't Give Too Much Away)

Just enough to pique our interests

This Week:

The funeral home heist was considerably more complicated; first off, how would I get in?  The exterior windows were either too high to reach of firmly imprisoned by iron bars.  Through the wired glass in the locked rear door, I looked in on a dark hallway.

Happy Hour of the Damned

By Mark Henry

pg 70

Book Blog Chat (7) Schedule

We have our next book selected for our chats in January!

So, what book is it you ask...  Well, we have heard great things of this book and really look forward to reading it.  No, I'm not much of a zombie person, but I just can't pass this book up much longer it sounds like a great read - much more than the zombies that bore me.  And Robyn from The Bookoholic Zone agrees.  We have been following the author for some time and enjoy his humor.  Many of you may have already have read the books in the series about Amanda.  So we would love for you to join us in the chats.

So, it pleases me to say our next book to chat on is....

Happy Hour of the Damned
By Mark Henry
Seattle. One minute you're drinking a vanilla breve, the next, some creepy old dude is breathing on you, turning you into a zombie. And that's just for starters. Now, the recently deceased Amanda Feral is trying to make her way through Seattle's undead scene with style (mortuary-grade makeup, six-inch stilettos, Balenciaga handbag on sale) while satisfying her craving for human flesh (Don't judge. And no, not like chicken.) and decent vodkatinis.

Making her way through a dangerous world of cloud-doped bloodsuckers, reapers, horny and horned devils, werewolves, celebrities, and PR-obsessed shapeshifters--not to mention an extremely hot bartender named Ricardo--isn't easy. And the minute one of Amanda's undead friends disappears after texting the word, "help" (The undead--so dramatic!) she knows the afterlife is about to get really ugly.

Something sinister is at hand. Someone or something is hellbent on turning Seattle's undead underworld into a place of true terror. And this time, Amanda may meet a fate a lot worse than death...

We have the schedule planned all out for you, thanks to the help of Mark.
Stop 1 ~ January   6, 2011 - end of Chapter 11 pg 115
Stop 2 ~ January 13, 2011 - end of Chapter 23 pg 239
Stop 3 ~ January 20, 2011 - End of book