Read All About It: Undead Girl Gang

If you’re looking for a high-school adventure chock full of magic, with a dash of zombies and one hell of a mystery, Undead Girl Gang should be your next read. Lily Anderson’s latest novel is a window into the life of Mila Flores, teenage wiccan, unapologetic fat black girl, and high school student, whose life is thrown into a special kind of chaos.

When the two most popular girls at school seemingly commit suicide, followed days later by Mila’s best friend Riley, Mila knows that something is wrong. But no one else in town believes that any foul play is involved, and Mila is determined to get to the bottom of it. She sets up a ritual to bring Riley back—and ends up dragging the two other girls, June and Dayton, back to life with her. The next problem? None of them remember anything about their deaths. And with only seven days left until the spell returns them to the grave, Mila has to wrangle three teenage girls and find their murderer, before the killer finds their next victim.

This novel is intense and sometimes graphic, and I loved every second of it. Which is a surprise, because I normally dislike anything that smells even faintly of zombies—and this resurrection magic toes that line pretty closely. But Anderson’s tale is a message of self-realized beauty, badass teenagers, and some powerful and dark magic that was obviously crafted with care and realized through Anderson’s immense talent. The fictional aspects of Mila’s struggle are deepened by the more realistic facets of her character, reflected in her appearance and the opinions of those around her.

The villain twist was something I had kind of sort of thought of earlier in the book, but dismissed out of hand because I expected this to be a typical teenage story. But I was completely blown out of the water by what actually happened, and even more satisfied because of it. Basically, the moral of this review would be to trust your instincts, and never trust anything you read until everything has played out on the page. Anderson has a deft hand with mystery, stunning twists, and plain good writing.

The fat rep really resonated with me. As someone who is fat, seeing a fat main character dealing with the same problems I have dealt with for years was sometimes hard, and there were definitely a few misty-eyed moments as I remembered my own experiences and compared them to Mila’s. And high school wasn’t a walk in the park for me, so reading about Mila was strangely cathartic, even though Mila is so much more of a badass than I ever was. In any case, the fat rep is something that is sorely needed right now. A young woman who has taken control of her own life, and focuses not on how it is affecting her, but how she is affecting the world in her own way.

And the magic that Mila harnesses to bring her best friend (and two others) back from the dead for a week? It’s heavy stuff. Wiccan sensibilities guide Mila, and I loved the mechanics that Anderson lovingly writes. From the materials to the spells to the simple rituals and the complex ones, Anderson grounds each step in the real practice, and makes it feel natural as an integral piece of the novel and her characters.

Even the background characters were fascinating and engaging. The owner of the store where Mila and Riley got their supplies from is a sweet, middle-aged woman (who is also a lesbian!). Mila’s younger sisters are pains in the butt, just like you would expect from siblings, and introduce a unique dynamic to compare to Mila’s relationship with her parents. The high school reads like a typical crappy, hormone-filled environment of disinterest—cliques abound, vicious rumors are spread, show choirs think they’re more popular than they really are, and everyone’s worried about how they look to everyone else. You know, the normal stuff that gives anyone who went to a similar high school cringe from the memories and the second-hand embarrassment.

Undead Girl Gang is a great read, and I highly recommend you pick it up as soon as you can! It’ll pull you back to high school, but it’ll also pull you into a fantastic, magical world that has real consequences and chaos mixed with friendships, tough choices, and strong women. Lily Anderson has a big one here, and I can’t wait to read more from her!