The Girl With All The Gifts

Author: M.R. Carey

One-sentence summary: In a world overrun with a virus that turns humans into zombie-like cannibals, a few children show some resistance to the virus, including a young girl who must decide who she really is and where she belongs.

B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 6

Our favorite thing about it: The ethics questions posed throughout the book were relevant and interesting to think about.

Our least favorite thing about it: That it was gruesome in parts and zombie books are not our thing (apparently).

Main Topics of Discussion: Survival Instinct, Ethics, Relationships, What Endures, Humanity, Characters

Our favorite quote: “And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out.”

Notes: The first thing we ALL shared about this book was that parts of it were gross and gruesome to us. This was unanimous…whether we had read or listened to the book. We’ve read a lot of troubling and graphic things over the years, but for some reason, this aspect of this book bothered us. Maybe because the book didn’t have many redeeming qualities to make up for it.

This time, I’m just going to write the notes I took during our discussion. They pretty much speak for themselves:

• The ending was weak and unsatisfactory. There was no cure and it ended ambiguously (some of us weren’t sure what the author was trying to imply at the end.
• The one sexual encounter of the novel was way out of left field and completely unnecessary. That’s not to say it couldn’t have been done well and fit into the book, because we sort of got the reason for it…but it came across as badly handled to us.
• The ending didn’t totally jive with the characters…Melanie, in particular. She basically condemned Justine to death after making it her life’s mission to keep the woman alive for the entire book up until that point. What???
• The ethics of what was acceptable to do to the children who were infected, but who didn’t show the regular symptoms – all in the name of a cure – was probably the most (and maybe only) interesting thing about this book.
• We didn’t really like any of the characters, and that makes it hard to care about them or about the book
• The whole time they talked about Beacon, but we never got there in the book.
• The junkers…what??? They seemed an unnecessary and not fully-developed element
• There were several plot holes – and we discovered more as we continued discussing

Memorable Meeting Moments: Dara showed us her “rap” face, and Lindsay demonstrated how to pronounce “vehemently” again

What We Ate: Pot stickers, Asian pork, fried rice, Snow Peas and Radicchio, Crockpot Chocolate Cake with Ice Cream and Berries