I received this book from Titan Press in exchange for an honest review.

Jane McKeene is training to be a zombie killer because she's a black woman and therefore, by the law, she's forced into becoming a trained combatant against the 'shamblers' to protect the white people in the community. Constantly fighting against the racism she has to face every day, and the hordes of zombies protecting her loved ones, Jane eventually finds herself shipped to Summerland - a Western town that pretends to be a safe haven but could actually be the destruction of them all.

I really enjoyed this story which gave a really fresh take on the average zombie apocalypse tale I have become used to. For starters, this is set post Civil-War America so is a historical zombie fiction, and manages to weave in a tale of racial injustice that really hits home. Jane as a character, for me, was absolutely brilliant and superbly formed and introduced to the reader. She arrived on the page fully-functional with a brilliant past, and a personality that shone through the pages. She had courage and spunk, and was full of brains as well. She could fight, and was pretty bad-ass about it too!

The racism in this book shown towards Jane and her friends is very hard to read at times, but I found the way Justina Ireland made the characters be racist about a zombie apocalypse genuinely believable because I do fully believe there's pig ignorant people on this world that would find some way of pinning a zombie apocalypse on non-white folk!

I really loved the letters between Jane and her mom, which were at the start of each chapter - and even though they were snippets, they told a lovely story in and of itself as well which was very powerful. There's also a great female friendship in it that does start out more frenemies but does end up in a mutual respect and love. I wasn't completely happy that Jane disliked Katherine because she was so pretty at first but fortunately this did end up all okay in the end. It's also strongly applied that Katherine identifies as asexual in this book, and Jane is bisexual.

This was a great story with some fascinating historical aspects to it, and a lot of zombie action as well. Justina Ireland wove in the true way that Native American children were sent to schools and institutionalised into this book, and treated really badly overall, and it was something I never really knew about before or learned about. I'm not sure if there's going to be a sequel to this book but I would have no hesitation in picking up another book about Jane!