Kick at the Darkness by Keira Andrews
Paranormal M/M Romance
Released: May 26, 2015
Self Published

Reviewed by Mandi

College freshman Parker Osborne is having the worst day ever. He humiliated himself trying to pick up a cute guy, he hasn’t made any friends at school, and his stupidly hot jerk of a TA gave him a crappy grade on his paper. He’s going to drop Adam Hawkins’ film class and start fresh tomorrow after he’s had a good sulk.

But Parker’s about to find out what a bad day really looks like—if he can survive the night.

A virus is unleashed, transforming infected people into zombie-like killers. After these quick and deadly creepers swarm campus, Parker only escapes thanks to Adam swooping him onto the back of his trusty motorcycle. Now they’re on the run—and stuck with each other.

When they’re not bickering, they’re fighting off the infected in a bloody battle for survival. Their only hope is to head east to Parker’s family, but orphaned Adam has a secret he’s not sure Parker will accept: he’s a werewolf. Can they trust each other enough to find some light in these dark days?

First, don’t freak out – the protagonists are not zombies – so no worrying that vital body parts will fall off during a sex scene *wink*.  A zombie outbreak – spread through bites and infection. This author does a really nice job with the action scenes and setting up the horror. She has supporting characters die – horribly. It felt real and scary. At one point the wind blew one of my doors shut in my house and I almost fell off the couch. You could feel the chaos and devastation in every town Parker and Adam traveled. The way the zombies would attack and congregate felt Walking Dead-ish, which isn’t a bad thing. The author made the outside world scary, confusing and bleak. I liked.

Parker and Adam are basically strangers when the zombie outbreak occurs. Parker is a freshman at Stanford and has never been kissed. Socially awkward, he has had a hard time adjusting to college life. When he gets a C- on a paper, he storms into the teacher assistant’s office for an explanation. Enter Adam. Adam is the cool dude in the leather coat that won’t hear any of Parker’s whining bullshit. The next day is the zombie outbreak, and Adam happens to pick up Parker on a motorcycle saving his life. These two are now stuck together trying to survive. They camp out, hide out, and break into businesses and homes to find supplies and a safe place to sleep. Parker doesn’t realize Adam is gay until they take a shower together. (showers were rare and quite the commodity once the zombies appeared!) Their private parts bumped together and then it was orgasms for everybody time!

Parker and Adam have a nice romance. A lot of times when I’m reading suspense books, if they are running from the bad guys yet stop to have sex it frustrates me. Hello, bad guys! But in this situation, when the world is ending, eh – go ahead and have that sex boys. It might be the last you get. Amidst all the chaos, this author balances the romance well.

If you read the blurb above,  you will have noticed it’s not only a zombie apocalypse, but Adam is also a werewolf. It isn’t revealed until halfway through the book – and I think I would have liked this more had he just been human. But his super-hearing and seeing did help them survive more than once.

I really liked this book until the last quarter for two reasons. First, Parker and Adam come upon this resort that was built for rich people that is now a safe haven from the zombies – but it just didn’t flow with the feel of the rest of the book. We are introduced to several new characters and we have to question their motives. It all felt very rushed. Had this been introduced earlier in the story, maybe we could have settled down with them, but I didn’t like this inclusion. And the very, very end – I left this book feeling unsatisfied. Maybe a second book is in the works? I don’t know how I feel about the end, but again – it felt rushed. I needed more pages to finish everything off.

Otherwise, a fun, adventurous book.

Grade: B-

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