Review: The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong: A Zombie Love Story by K. A. Schloegel

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Teenage writer Eleanor Armstrong tells the story of her life as a collection of Facebook-esque entries interspersed with the chapters of the novel she is writing. She starts out writing a nice, quiet high school romance, depicting the love triangle between ultra-hip and smart Sarah – who is really just Eleanor with great hair, her geeky pal Marky – who is Eleanor’s pal in real life too, and popular jock Brandon – a character based on a boy who once spoke to Eleanor. But to her dismay, the novel turns to horror after zombies attack the school and kill Brandon. You know, just the usual “Boy meets girl. Boy turns into zombie. Zombie-boy loses girl. Zombie-boy gets girl.”

Huh?

Write what you know, Eleanor’s teacher tells her. And what she knows is a high school teeming with bored kids who will prey upon each other, can be kind, cruel, fall in love, or anything in between just to relieve the tedium of their existence. In other words, a school full of zombies. So Eleanor goes with it. Zombie attacks abound, both in her novel and her real life as an overlooked teenager with peculiar superpowers.

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Review:

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong is humorous, action-packed and memorable. The main character, Eleanor, describes herself as a ‘plain-unusual’ girl; however, similarly to the character of Sarah that she creates in her story, she can be witty and spunky. Eleanor created the character of Sarah to project the traits that she wanted in herself, but thought she was lacking. I believe that by the end of the novel, Eleanor accepts herself for who she is.

The novel is laid out in such a way so that there is a chapter from Eleanor’s zombie story first and then Eleanor’s blog entries detailing events in her life, such as her feelings on the breakdown in the relationship between her friend Marky and herself, questions about her father’s safe and her feelings for a boy named Elijah- who spoke to her once. Interspersed with these are comments on the criticisms her teacher gave her story and a glimpse into the shocking relationship between her brother and a teacher.

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong was interesting as it depicted how Eleanor wanted to be in her ‘alter-ego’ Sarah. Therefore, the novel has a lot to do with the struggle to find an identity. This is mostly evident towards the end where Eleanor confronts her father about the reasons why her mother really left them and blames herself. I found this scene highly emotional as it expressed her vulnerabilities along with the scene where Elijah talks to her for the second time:

“Oh. Fat girl in the weight room,” he said. In the exact same tone of voice he had said, “What do you think of the assignment?”

The other boys laughed.

And I almost cried... because it was the second thing Elijah had said to me. What do you think of the assignment? And then fat girl in the weight room. (P.100)

The zombie story she writes is always fun and constantly moving. It was in total juxtaposition to Eleanor’s real life which, though interesting, was mostly ordinary. I thought that Eleanor could have explained the finer details of her zombie story more. In some instances, Sarah would know certain facts without anyone telling her and would act upon it and it wasn’t until the end of the story that I was told how she knew.

Additionally, Sarah told me how she knew certain facts (like where another character was) instead of showing me. Therefore, the revelation of how she had known a lot of things wasn’t as strong as it could have been as there was a lack of foreshadowing in the zombie story that Eleanor wrote and the explanation for it was somewhat complex. A last criticism was that there were a few spelling and grammar mistakes in the novel.

The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong is well-paced and easy to read. There were times I was laughing out loud at the visual images formed. Most of the characters felt believable but the weakest were Doctor Who and the Zombie Queen from Eleanor’s story.

The story Eleanor wrote was highly entertaining and it certainly played on stereotypes of what a hero should be like and what a villain should be like. Eleanor went through a series of epiphanies throughout the novel and finally leaves us with some words of wisdom. The zombie story she wrote also concludes in a satisfying way.

Overall, I highly enjoyed The Peculiar Superpowers of Eleanor Armstrong and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in zombies, identity and lots of humour.

Read a preview here.

Book Rating: 4/5

Cover: 3/5

Concept: 4/5

Author: K. A. Schloegel

-Received from author.