Kindle Edition Amazon Christine Verstraete Barnes & Noble IndieBound Category:  Young Adult/Teen Publisher: Intrigue Publishing ISBN-10:  0979478898 Pages: 206 Copyright: August 1, 2013 ISBN-13: 9780979478895 Price: $2.99 (eBook) Becca's life is changed forever...the day her cousin comes home and infects her with the zombie virus via an accidental scratch. ** Young Adult Winner - 2013 Halloween Book Festival! **   Life can suck when you're sixteen. It can suck even worse when you're not- quite- dead. Sixteen-year-old Rebecca Herrera Hayes faces every teenager's biggest nightmares: bad skin, bad hair, and worse . . . turning into one of the living dead. Becca's life changes forever when her cousin Spence comes back to their small Wisconsin town carrying a deadly secret—he's becoming a zombie, a fate he shares with her through an accidental scratch. The Z infection, however, has mutated, affecting younger persons like her, or those treated early enough, differently. Now she must cope with weird physical changes and habits no girl wants to be noticed for. Then she meets Gabe, a good-looking part-Z like her, and fears falling for him. After all, how can he, who shows hardly any Z symptoms, be interested in someone like her? But time is running out... Becca needs his help as she and her cousin Carm search for their missing mothers and fight off hungry Zs. Most of all, she needs to find something, anything, to stop this deadly transformation before it is forever too late...   Excerpt Prologue: A virus. A freaking virus. I'd been sick before, you know, measles, mumps…kid stuff…but not really sick. Never like this. This...this couldn't be happening. I tuned back in to the doctor's explanation…new diet, pills, blah-blah-blah…and let his words fade again into the background. Gone was the golden tan I'd nurtured over the summer with tanning cream and hours sunbathing by the pool with one of my cousins. My skin had a weird grayish tone, like I'd rubbed myself with fireplace ash. I gazed at my legs, now mottled with strange gray blotches, and my pretty pink toenails peeking out from beneath the sheet. The machine next to me made a frantic beep-beep. I turned and caught my reflection in the metal canister sitting on the table next to the bed. Whimpering, I rubbed a hand over my cheek, wondering at the scaly texture, while at other times I felt almost nothing. Large, deep brown eyes under ebony bangs stared back. I saw a decent nose. Spots. I took in the pinkish patches and my uneven skin tone, which reminded me of those old battleships on the PBS show I'd watched with my aunt. For the first time in my sixteen-year-old life I was...ugly. I struck the bed frame over and over, the pain barely registering. The machine's whir-click-whir turned into a wail almost louder than mine--beep-beep-beeeeeeep. A nurse in blue scrubs rushed in and tried to reassure me, even as she attempted to keep me immobile on this slab they called a bed. "Relax, it'll be fine," she said. "No, it won't," I yelled, "it won't!" How could looking like freaking King Tut without his wrappings ever be fine?

GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie- fun, readable introduction!
GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie brings teenaged angst to an entirely new level when 16-year-old Becca is infected with a zombie virus and becomes one of the living dead. Still sentient and able to control the whole flesh-eating cravings, Becca struggles to find her place in a world where some of the dead eat the living while others try to fit into their old lives, only to be met by hostility and fear from former friends and family. "Written from Becca's point of view, we get a narrow and very realistic view of this chaotic new world from a self-absorbed teenager's tunnel vision. A very fun and readable introduction to a new series! --Dana Fredsti, author of Plague Town & Plague Nation, swordfighter, and actress in Army of Darkness

Midwest Book Review - Fantasy SciFi Shelf
Girl Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie is a dark, zombie apocalypse novel about a Rebecca, a sixteen-year-old girl who contracts the dreaded zombie virus. The symptoms manifest slowly and relentlessly, turning her life upside-down with bizarre physical changes. Even when she finds herself falling for Gabe, a handsome part-Z, she's conflicted. Worse, hungry full-Z's are an ever- present threat! Can anything stop the deadly Z transformation - and is it too late for Becca to live as a human again? Told in first person from Becca's point of view, Girl Z is a different type of zombie apocalypse story, especially recommended for fans of the genre!

Kings River Life Magazine
“...You can actually look at this story as a parable about the teenage condition. An orderly life is upended by forces and urges that are difficult to control. People you trust can turn on you, and sometimes you feel like you’re going to die. Yep, that’s being a teenager.
“...Verstraete, whose background runs from journalism to designing one-twelfth scale dollhouse rooms, has come up with a clever way of telling her story from a zombie point of view without sinking to the “Hungry…eat…BRAIINNSSS!” level.... With Girl Z, Verstraete has shuffled to the head of the zombie-lit horde...” - Terrance McArthur, Kings River Life Magazine