Fiend by Peter Stenson

  When Chase Daniels first sees the little girl in umbrella socks tearing open the Rottweiler, he's not too concerned. As a longtime meth addict, he’s no stranger to horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations. 
   But as he and his fellow junkies soon discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived.
   The funny thing is, Chase’s life was over long before the apocalypse got here, his existence already reduced to a stinking basement apartment and a filthy mattress and an endless grind of buying and selling and using. He’s lied and cheated and stolen and broken his parents’ hearts a thousand times. And he threw away his only shot at sobriety a long time ago, when he chose the embrace of the drug over the woman he still loves.
   And if your life’s already shattered beyond any normal hopes of redemption…well, maybe the end of the world is an opportunity. Maybe it’s a last chance for Chase to hit restart and become the man he once dreamed of being. Soon he’s fighting to reconnect with his lost love and dreaming of becoming her hero among civilization’s ruins.
   But is salvation just another pipe dream? 

This was certainly a different take on the whole zombie genre, though it wasn’t everything that the blurb promised. 

I think the main issue that this book has is that it is describe as a dark comedy. I didn’t find anything remotely comedic about it, not even anything I could call dark comedy. The novel started pretty well, but lost its way somewhere in the middle, only picking up the pace once more at the last two chapters or so. For a zombie novel, that’s disappointing. 

The protagonist, Chase, was interesting but not someone likeable in any way. It’s hard to root for a character that has no real redeeming qualities, not even the supposed love he has for his ex girlfriend, KK. The ending, however, was well written and had enough tension to get the heart racing.

If you enjoy zombie novels, then this one might be an interesting addition to your collection.