Sandy M’s review of Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi
Futuristic Romance published by SHOMI 26 Aug 08

I’m really surprised at my reaction to this SHOMI. The few I’ve read so far I’ve absolutely loved. I so enjoy the offbeat, quirky futuristic aspects of these books while still giving me a wonderful hero and heroine involved in a lovely romance, despite all that goes on around them. While those offbeat aspects are present in this book, I was quite disappointed in the romance and even the hero and heroine to a certain extent. This one just didn’t live up to the same level as some of its SHOMI predecessors.

The futuristic elements are definitely present and very imaginative, a common denominator that I like in all the SHOMI books. The year is 2036 and Molly Anderson has just emerged from the fallout shelter her father built for her and her mother back in 2030 when the world went crazy and the apocolypse was imminent. A plague had run rampant through the world, killing some and mutating others into monsters, zombies who feed on humans and turn those they don’t kill. She also emerges as Razor Girl, a near replica of her father’s ideal fighting machine of old, complete with razors that flip open from under her fingernails and ocular implants, ready and fit to fight off those monsters as she makes her way to Disney World where her father and other scientists will begin to make a new world for mankind. But before she can get on the road, she finds survivors in her hometown, one of which is the grown-up Chris Griffin, now called Chase, the young boy she fell in love with six years ago, the boy she had to give up to help save world.

Chase may be grown up now, but he still has no confidence and doesn’t feel up to the task of caring for the rag-tag team of children left in his care when his older brother is killed by the Others, but he does his best and also promises Molly he will get her to Disney World and her father. He’s still as vulnerable when it comes to Molly as he was when they were teenagers and discovering one other. It’s good to be with her again, but he doesn’t feel he’s even in the same league with the new Molly. He tries to pull himself up by the bootstraps and do his best for all concerned, but he keeps screwing up and when Molly confronts him on certain issues, things don’t go well. But just when they make up and realize their love for each other is real, Chase is bitten by an attacking Other, and he’ll do anything to keep Molly safe. They’re both playing against the clock now. Molly’s internal equipment is eroding and Chase has only two weeks before the signs of his turning into a nightmare appear. When they find more unexpected survivors along the way, knowing Molly and the children will be looked after, Chase decides to take his fate into his own hands so there’s no chance at all he’ll ever hurt the woman he loves.

And this is only part of the story. Every other chapter in the book takes you back six years before when Chase and Molly first come together and discover that things just aren’t normal around the neighborhood; Molly’s father is considered a lunatic with all his ramblings of the end of the world; and the disheartening night for Chase when Molly leaves him waiting for her to join him and their friends on their trek into the mountains to hopefully stay out of the plague’s reach. It took me a few chapters to get into the back-and-forth method of telling the story; it’s a little confusing at the beginning of Chapter 2. But it is an interesting way to do it and once I got used to it, it actually goes along with the quirkiness that makes SHOMIs stand out.

The idea of the end of world in such a way plays well and we’re given a couple of surprises along the way, especially at the end, but there’s a point in Chase and Molly’s relationship that I didn’t care for. It’s that jump to conclusions mentality without waiting for an explanation that is used so often in stories, and with it happening several times between them it just felt like forced, unimaginative conflict. I did forgive Chase for his commonplace pushing Molly away instead of telling her the truth when he gets bitten because by that time I did believe in his love for her, especially after all of the extraneous problems he went through. But by this time it’s so late in the book, we really haven’t had much of a romance. The book is action packed with all those zombies, but I could very easily give a few of them up for a little more loving between the main characters.

Grade: C

Summary:

Molly Anderson is not your average twenty-one-year-old. It’s been six years since she and her family escaped into a bunker, led by her conspiracy theorist father and his foreknowledge of a plot to bring about the apocalypse. But her father’s precautions didn’t stop there. Molly is now built to survive.

Yes, Ian Anderson’s favorite book gave him ideas on how to “improve” his daughter. Molly is faster, stronger, and her ocular implants and razor-tipped nails set her apart. Apart, when—venturing alone out of the bunker and into a plague ravaged, monster-ridden wilderness—what Molly needs most is togetherness. Chase Griffin, a friend from her past, is her best bet. But while he and others have miraculously survived, the kind boy has become a tormented man. Together, these remnants of humanity must struggle toward trusting each other and journey to the one place Molly’s father believed all civilization would be reborn: a magic kingdom, where everyone knows it’s a small world after all.

Read an excerpt.