Get Graphic - I Love Him To Pieces (My Boyfriend Is A Monster #1) by Evonne Tsang

Title: I Love Him To Pieces 

(My Boyfriend is a Monster, #1)

Author: Evonne Tsang

Illustrator: Janina Gorrissen

Publisher: Graphic Universe

Publication Date: April 1, 2011

Format: e-galley

Genre: Graphic Novel, YA Romance, Horror

Other Books in the Series:

Made For Each Other (My Boyfriend is a Monster, #2) release date April 2011*

My Boyfriend Bites (My Boyfriend is a Monster, #1) release date April 2011*

Under His Spell (My Boyfriend is a Monster, #3) release date April 2011*

*I've seen conflicting information regarding book sequence and release dates   

How I Got It: free from NetGalley

Amazon Summary:

Can love survive the zombie apocalypse? Maybe Dicey's first chance at a real relationship was dead from the start. She's the star of her high school baseball team, and Jack's the star of the science program. Her idea of a study session includes sleeping in the sun, and his idea of a good game involves dungeons and dice. But opposites start attracting when they're assigned to be partners in a class project. Now an outbreak of a weird infection--it eats your brains and leaves you hungry for more--might not mean just the end of their first date. It might mean the end of everything. Will their relationship fall apart faster than zombies in the Florida sun, or can Dicey and Jack beat the odds and find a happy ending?

Review:

I hesitated to put "Horror" in the genre description because I Love Him To Pieces is like the cotton candy of zombie books.  I was expecting something more along the lines of The Walking Dead or at the least High School of the Dead, but I got a far more kinder and gentler version of the zombie genre.  

Jack & Dicey
courtesy of Janina Gorrissen

Dicey is the only girl on the baseball team, but she and her teammates have been playing together since her dad coached their little league team.  Dicey is a loved and respected member of the team.  She's also a very capable individual and Jack has no problem letting her protect or rescue him.  This chick has chops!  Jack is a super smart science nerd who plays role playing games on the weekends.  In the high school world they are on different sides of the spectrum, but a health class project partners them up and it's the start of a beautiful friendship (and a little something more). 

What really struck me about I Love Him To Pieces was the humor and the supportive characters that surround Dicey and Jack.  The parents are loving and involved, though in Jack's case they aren't as present as he would like.  They each have a group of friends that support their interests and were noticed Jack and Dicey's deepening relationship before our hero and heroine did.

Courtesy of Janina Gorrissen

While there was death and destruction, this is not a gory book but the humor and the sexual references make it a better read for middle grades and YA readers.  Now, before anyone's Red Alert alarm goes off, the sexual references are regarding parenting an egg for health class (Jack is called the "baby daddy").  In my opinion it's all very clean, not tacky or inappropriate at all, I just don't know if most older elementary students would understand the references and find them funny.  (The student newspaper interview transcript at the end of the book made me laugh out loud.)

The story was well paced but I the passage of time was not represented well.  I would get confused, go back a page or two, and then realize that hours or days had passed between one panel and the next.  Despite my enjoyment of the story, I found this to be a real problem.  I also had a few issues with the art.  I can see that Gorrissen is a talented artist and the coloring and shading on the front and back covers is fantastic.  While many pages and panels were well drawn, I found that sometimes it was a bit hard to tell what exactly was happening.  The fact that I was reading a digital copy might be to blame for the clarity of the image, but I don't think so.  Like the previous problem, this is something that should have been fixed at the story boarding stage.

Each of the My Boyfriend is a Monster books will be written and illustrated by different people and tell a completely new story.  One one hand this sounds fun, on the other hand I really enjoyed Dicey and Jack and would have liked to see more of them - they made a great team.                                                                                                            

Parts I liked:
Jack and Dicey sneak out of school to go on a date:

Jack: "We're disrupting the order of things, you know. Jocks and nerds are natural enemies.
Dicey: "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world?"
Jack: "Now you're quoting poetry. And I'm cutting school. Everything is in chaos.
Dicey: "Bring on the Apocalypse!"
Shortly thereafter they find out about the zombie outbreak. oopsie.

Verdict:

Evonne Tsang has written a delightfully witty treat of a zombie story.  While Janina Gorrissen is a great artist, there are places where I can't figure out what's going on in the picture, and this the storytelling.  This, combined with a small but problem with the flow of events brings the book down a notch.  However, the story is so much fun, total brain candy.  This would be a fun one to pick up from the library.

Related Links:

Sneak peaks of I Love Him to Pieces can be found at the My Boyfriend is a Monster website.