A Humorous, Entertaining New Zombie Tale- With a Main Character That Makes Readers Want the Series of Garden Variety Zombies To Never End- Lucky We’re Just on Book One!
by Jeneane Vanderhoof
Zola Joyce brings readers the entertaining, humorous tale called Shrooms, the first in the Garden Variety Zombies series. It starts with “the character” — Hazel and I call her “the” rather than “a” only because of how unique she is, standing far and above other characters I have read about. Hazel will stick in your memory (as she does mine)- a heroine from the beginning, as she navigates life with a mother who is an addict, her mother’s boyfriend who is “a character” and Child Protective Services- knowing that life is better in the custody of her mother than the state (personally, I agree).
While Hazel normally can work her way around these child and family service visits (making sure her mother passes so that Hazel can stay at home) this one seems different- when Mrs. Stenopoulos (the social worker) begins to act outside normal behavior and become something wildly different than the normal, overweight, older woman who- while catching her mother and Hazel in some lies and mismanagement of the home, this time Mrs. Stenopoulos aggressively wants to take Hazel out of the home- for no real good reason. So the Sheriff is called. However, the aggressive behavior is so bad, it seems the social worker wants to physically hurt Hazel.
Hazel and her mother know the Sheriff well, and have had his help in the past. She has never known the man to be aggressive (either), so when he begins to beat up Mrs. Stenopoulos and her intern, Janet. When he is shot with his own gun, Hazel has no problem adding (in her sarcastic tone) that she will happily testify for the woman- that is- as long as she is provided with some incentives, like a green light on all visits for a year. 911 seems to be down and when Hazel hears over the police scanner that everyone has gone crazy, she has no problem agreeing- as everyone she can see is acting like a completely different person than she knows them to be- and totally nuts!
Where is Hazel’s mother anyway? She is usually always there for visits to the home but for this one, when her Uncle calls like he always does around those times- no one could seem to find her mother. And now that it seems everyone is going crazy, Hazel is beginning to feel a little worried as she ponders what to do about this situation, stuck in their apartment, Mrs. Stenopoulos and Janet knocking at the door, over and over, saying nothing. What is it that they want to do to Hazel anyway? Maneuvering her way through her escape tunnel and hatch (this is the kind of girl to have one), Hazel sets out to her Uncle Bill’s, knowing, at least, that he is probably at home. Maybe he can help find her mother.
As Hazel begins to search, she sees that the town has gone crazy. It could be the water supply, but there is also the thought that maybe it is the drugs that her mother and her boyfriend make and push ( Hazel has to help with that too, marketing on the Internet). As the Capitol is attacked on television, Hazel and her Uncle watch the world go crazy too. After all, they really are only at work on Yapper Nappers, a mix of dog treat and shrooms, after her mother’s boyfriend saw how the things he grew affected Hazel’s dog (it doesn’t help that Lester, the dog, is now addicted and need to be weaned off them). And if it’s all the way to DC (where the capitol is under attack), it can’t be a local problem, Hazel hopes.
Hazel’s uncle, the conspiracy theorist, says that COVID-19 may be the start of the real problem we are having- thinking it was released as a diversion for what would really happen- which is whatever is happening now. He coins this new event, COVID-20, 19 the precursor.
Because what did COVID-19 do but make people paranoid of the CDC and doctors? And, if anything, it made people want to stay away from hospitals, rather than go to them when they had a problem. Even if you were fearing death, the thought of going to the hospital and getting sicker or dying alone kept many people from going to the hospital when they would have at any other time (before COVID-19). After all, what was the point of releasing COVID-19 anyway? What did it do for anyone? Because this was not a natural pandemic but a man-made one. And, “You’ve got to admit, no one’s likely to go near a hospital these days,” says Hazel’s uncle to her. He further points out that humanity created Agent Orange and the Atomic Bomb. And while he isn’t confident in this theory, you never know. So the pair decided to “Look out for our friends and otherwise keep our heads down.”
As they collect Luke, Hazel’s cousin, they find out that people are changing in the same pattern- First, they get “extremely pissed off, unreasonable to the extreme,” as Luke coins what he has seen. Then they go quiet and wander around, not knowing what to do. After a couple of hours, start to itch uncontrollably and then start shivering and ask for water. When they find a professor and his student with their feet in a lobster tank, the creatures clawing their way down the hall, the fact the two find what they have done hilarious only sets Hazel and her Uncle with a quicker pace to find their family and get out of there to safety. Because they don’t know what will happen next in this progression as people turn to…..well, they still don’t know exactly what’s going on but they are getting closer, thinking it could be a parasite and heading to the microbiology lab to see what they can find.
Start on the journey within the Garden Variety Zombies with Book One, Shrooms- as the problems begin to unfold and Hazel, her uncle and cousin try to find her mother and find out- what is going on? Well written, funny, entertaining, the main character makes this great book even better- a survivor and one, you hope, will make her way through all the craziness around her.
Happy Reading!