This book explores the complexities of queer life post a break-up as well as the horrors of a zombie apocalypse and I really quite enjoyed that! Wendy, a bisexual woman is struggling to figure out how to stay inside the community after her breakup with Leah, who introduced her to the local queer scene, when all her friends were Leah's friends first. And if that wasn't enough to deal with after a house party to kick of pride people start acting weird and violent, culminating in a gorey, violent riot during a drag performance.
I really quite enjoyed this book, the chapters are short and you're able to fly through them quickly. I also really liked the characters, especially Wendy, a bisexual barista, Logan, a bisexual drag queen, Sunshine, a nonbinary pizza delivery person and Aurelia (a trans woman) and Sam (a lesbian), Leah's new flings. The story deals with heartbreak, community, feelings of (not) belonging, mental health (particularly depression and anxiety), drag, sex, the horrors of rainbow capitalism and shitty coperations, which were all things I loved! I also enjoyed the gorey, gruesome violence, which was truly flinch-worthy sometimes <3. It also works really well as a zombie apocalypse, hitting many of the familiar beats, while staying fresh and interesting by focusing on a small location and a limited number of events. Sometimes the story moves too quickly for me and there's never really the opportunity to take a breather or for any of the terror to fully sink in, which was my only complaint. I do think the horror of your entire community kind of imploding could have been shown in a bit more terrifying detail. But if you are interested in a less dark zombie apocalypse, while still exploring horrifying concepts this will probably work really well for you :)

3⭐️

I started reading 'The Z word' with good courage after reading the words: satire, zombies and queer.

Unfortunately the book was not for me. It was an entertaining book, but I felt like I was reading a caricature that kept me from getting into the story. There were certainly entertaining moments, but I had to force myself to read on. Unfortunately it didn't happen automatically. I think this has more to do with my personal preference for well-developed characters than with this book per se.
If you like zombies, everything queer and a bizarre story, then this book is definitely for you.

Thank you netgalley for providing the arc. This is my honest review.

A worthy addition to the small, but in-demand genre of queer zombie fiction (not that the zombies are all queer). If you read the synopsis and it sounds good to you, you know what you're getting yourself into and you'll probably like it. It won't win any prestigious literary awards but this story is loads of fun. Bonus: not everyone is white or in their twenties! #WeNeedMoreQueerApocalypses
#NetGalley

Lindsay King-Miller's The Z Word is pretty much all you could ask for in a queer zombie apocalypse book. Suspenseful, sexy, heartbreaking, and funny, I truly didn't want this book to end! Amidst the gore and outright panic that undoubtedly arise during a Pride marred with zombies, The Z Word is also about queer community and chosen family, relationship drama, corporate pinkwashing, and the ongoing attack on LGBTQ+ rights.
I especially appreciated the attention to detail put towards the characters. Not only were the characters diverse and unique, they were also quirky, charming, and relatable.

Sit down, clear your schedule for a couple of hours and prepare to be entertained. This was crazy, funny, a little bit gory and darkly damming of corporate America and politics.
Wendy is a mess, she's made a mess and she has no idea how to fix either herself or her situation. Then Pride comes to town, as does a zombie outbreak, and Wendy gets to step up. I really enjoyed this, I think the world needs more romantic horror, especially when the characters are so kick ass.

Immersive, engaging, and fun. A recommended purchase for collections where queer fic and zombie stories are popular.

I am always on the look out for fun adult queer books and this fits the bill - zombie apocalypse during pride caused by a corporation chasing that pink dollar? Amazing..

We will be stocking this when it comes out :)

Content Warnings: Gore, Police Brutality, Pregnancy Anxiety, Non-Consensual Drugging

I’ll start with that I, personally, didn’t enjoy this book as much as others might. In general, I don’t like zombie outbreak/apocalypse fiction, so I also didn’t care for this setting or the ending of the book. That said, I did feel the book was well-written and had some great moments of both gravity and levity that you don’t often find. The hard-hitting moments are earned and rightfully painful, while the comedy moments offer much needed relief without feeling too out of place. For me, the drag-show-killing-zombie-montage was the best example of the latter. I also really liked the characters in the book, which was really what kept me reading. They are fun, messy, and compelling, even if not all of them were likable. The commentary/cause of the zombie outbreak is a little on-the-nose for me, but having the book take place during Pride overall made a good setting enough for me to ignore it. I think fans of horror-comedy will like this one a lot, even if it’s not to my taste.

*Advance copy provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.*

As an avid zombie reader I was instantly captured by this concept, due to it's unique queer setting and fun cover. And the concept kept being fun throughout the book, but unfortunately the separate themes felt a little flat. As a zombie novel it started of great, but the story had a few plot holes and the conclusion was unrealistic (zombies aside). And the queer setting is SO queer it almost feels like a caricature. It was still an enjoyable read, with some really fun side characters (go Sunshine!).

Gore and sex, and sex and gore. Thank you to #NetGalley for letting me read this ARC.

I keep saying that I'm not a reader of horror, but with this book I'm officially letting go of that self-image.

This book is a queer horror story, that takes place during a pride celebration in the small US town of San Lazaro, with the main character Wendy in focus. More or less her whole social circle is at a house party, sort of a start-off happening for the pride event they have organized together, when weird things start to happen. Maybe not enough to make anyone THAT worried tohugh. But then they wake up the next day, and realize that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. It quickly goes downhill from there, and a small group of friends suddenly find themselves in the middle of a zombie horror show that no-one else seems to try and stop. That's all I'll say, plot wise.

I especially liked that there was so much humour blended in with the straight up slasher/gore situation going on, it made the story slightly easier to deal with. But make no mistake, there is genuin heartbreak in there too.

If nothing else, the fact that there is a mysterious stoner pizza delivery person, for pizza restaurant Pizzapocalype, called Sunshine should make you intrigued.

Okay so here we go: I’m not usually a zombie apocalypse book kind of gal but I did not want to put this one down! I started reading this one just to get a short Z title for my reading challenged but I found myself pulling for these crazy characters! Kind of scary but not like oh my god someone is going to jump out at me but more like I wonder if this could actually happen! Don’t drink the seltzer!

Written By: Sable Quinn
Sable’s Rating: 5/5 stars
Content Warning: there is a brutal scene involving Wendy, Sam, Aurelia, and Logan when the police are called outside of the pharmacy. The scene does show an instance of police brutality that some readers may prefer to skip.
Review on Lindsay King-Miller’s The Z Word, a new spin on the horror genre. A story surrounding the bisexual main character, Wendy. The audience is thrown directly in the middle of gay drama, the start of the apparent zombie apocalypse, disgusting hard-seltzers, and all of it coming to you from what has been dubbed the ‘Last Pride.’ Release date: May 7, 2024.

When one hears the collective words ‘zombie apocalypse,’ ‘gay pride,’ ‘outbreak,’ etc, you know this new novel, The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller, will either be the next book to write home about or it will be the cheesiest god-forsaken thing ever to grace this Earth. I mean, hell, even if you hear the words ‘gay’ and ‘apocalypse’ being even briefly mentioned in the same vicinity of each other, the hair stands up on the back of your neck just because this could have the potential to be the literary world’s worst nightmare if not executed properly.

King-Miller falls into the former category because The Z Word is an intricately crafted story of life interruptions and what it means to be human. All the while, King-Miller also has her audience experiencing an entire range of emotions throughout the entire journey of her latest work. I swear I transitioned through a whole spread of emotions while reading this lovely book, even the ones I only break out for special occasions!

I wasn’t sure whether King-Miller’s writing would even catch my attention at first, simply due to the misleading, slower introduction to the book. The first scene starts with the first Pride party of Pride weekend. Our married couple, transgender Aurelia and lesbian Sam are hosting it at their house (side note: I am LIVING for the inclusivity King-Miller brings to the table within her new book. The amount of new knowledge and phrasing she has introduced me to about the queer community as a fellow queer person myself is enlightening and phenomenal. I felt, while reading this book as if I were progressing my knowledge and awareness while simultaneously enjoying the book and doing what I love).

We first meet our main character, Wendy, while she rummages through the Seabrook hard-seltzers. Seabrook is a hard-seltzer company that only just recently started trying to make a difference within the queer community strictly due to their association and good publicity/sales that comes from sponsoring this Pride event. We are artfully informed of this through King-Miller’s weaving of subtle information and her use of flashback chapters to help us fill in their histories with each other and Seabrook within their friend group.

As the party continues late into the night, we are introduced to all of the convoluted queer drama and our main characters: Wendy, Aurelia and Sam, Leah (Wendy’s ex-girlfriend that is kind of now participating in a poly-relationship with Aurelia and Sam — awkward!), Logan (our drag queen goth god — hearts for Logan!), Sunshine (our she/they pizza delivery driver who is a wet dream themselves and completely slays the entire zombie apocalypse), and our very butch-lesbian bestie Beau! All the while King-Miller is laying the land for us, she is also creating vague and strange behavior within others that starts in our peripheral vision during the party. This upcoming release is a crazy, entertaining, heart-warming, hilarious, and even romantic Horror book.

As aforementioned, King-Miller has a certain mastery of her craft so she can emote directly off the page and into our emotions. Let me just tell you this: the contempt I first felt toward Aurelia, Sam, and Leah was unmatched; the heartbreak I could feel echo in my chest during the **police brutality scene in front of the pharmacy was earth-shattering; I felt deeply the deafening and isolating loneliness, crippling regret, and involuntary self-sabotage that follows Wendy everywhere she goes as well as the giddiness Sunshine undoubtedly has swimming in their stomach.

King-Miller is an insanely talented author. She is particularly gifted with her world- and character-building, but the life she can breathe into her complex, damaged, and downright relatable characters is an extremely rare talent that only a few seem to truly do well.

Wendy, King-Miller’s main character, feels as if she were an extension of myself. I am confident that King-Miller has created an infinite and wholly relatable main character that will resonate with a specific part of her sapphic audience. I hope I was able to help give you a sneak peek at the truly genius story that King-Miller created. In this book, she shares a novel with us that represents a lot of the different types of drama that all Queers have experienced at one point or another, which intrigues her audience even further but also aids in healing our own experiences. I hope Lindsay can sweep you off your feet as she did to me!

The Z Word, the newest horror fiction novel that Lindsay King-Miller created and will be sharing with the rest of the world, will be released on May 7, 2024. It is an immense and captivating sapphic horror with a hint of a love story!
**Content Warning: there is a brutal scene involving Wendy, Sam, Aurelia, and Logan when the police are called outside of the pharmacy. The scene does show an instance of police brutality that some readers may prefer to skip.

A lightly humourous, fast-moving zombie story with enough gore to check "something bloody" off your reading bingo card. Wendy's feelings, about herself, Leah, and others in the crew, came off as realistically messy given her backstory, which unwinds throughout the book. Wendy reads as a real person caught in the mayhem. Other characters' perspectives helped build tension, but the plot moves too quickly to dwell on their experiences and emotions. The vivid descriptions of the settings and the snappy dialogue kept the story moving.