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Undead Journals: Book 1: Winter Wakening
Humanity had been on the brink of discovering a cure for our deadliest diseases. Now, it was on the brink of extinction... Mike Evans opened his eyes, praying silently that the rasping breath he could hear was his own. Two weeks ago, he had been hiding in a dark corner at the office Christmas party, trying to preserve his dignity. Now, he was hiding in the basement of an abandoned house, trying to preserve his life. Mike used to work in the city. Now he's one of the survivors; like-minded strangers, each keeping a journal of the fight to live and their search for loved ones. Melanie is a self-employed beauty therapist from the Midlands; Dirk, an American expat from Nashville; Harley, a rebellious young lady from Stoke; and Donald Eberlee - an eleven-year-old boy from Enfield, near London. Each must endure the bleakest British winter in living memory while evading an ever-increasing horde of the infected population, known as, “The Diseased”. Their best hope lies to the north; an arduous journey along icy roads filled with abandoned vehicles, rotting corpses, and danger at every turn. Along the way, they must find food, shelter, and maybe each other. Together, they might just make it to Spring, and survive the Winter Wakening.
- GenresHorror
467 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2020
31 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2020
Different views can't wait until the next book...
Worth a read....different views of the same event....Mike Evans....and Matt....I initially got those 2 characters mixed up...start book when you are not drowsy or a full stomach....you may very well throw up too. Good job Author....your reacts are vomit inducing, vomity, threw up in my mouth, queasy, sweat mouth watering pre puke. It was stepping....no...I won't do a spoiler. Oh and Brian...really vomit worthy!
Worth a read....different views of the same event....Mike Evans....and Matt....I initially got those 2 characters mixed up...start book when you are not drowsy or a full stomach....you may very well throw up too. Good job Author....your reacts are vomit inducing, vomity, threw up in my mouth, queasy, sweat mouth watering pre puke. It was stepping....no...I won't do a spoiler. Oh and Brian...really vomit worthy!
December 30, 2020
Different kind of zombie!
Well! This was different to say the least. in diary format, told by several survivors, taken from the events that happened to them, as normal, ordinary people, caught up in the apocalypse. good build up of the characters as the events unfold, and how they come together by the end of this first book. great potential. Am looking forward to reading the next book.
Well! This was different to say the least. in diary format, told by several survivors, taken from the events that happened to them, as normal, ordinary people, caught up in the apocalypse. good build up of the characters as the events unfold, and how they come together by the end of this first book. great potential. Am looking forward to reading the next book.
August 21, 2021
Zombies in England
It's interest reading someones diary, make it all seem more realistic.
As with most zombie books reality goes out of the window, but saying that I am enjoying this story.
I've became acquainted with the characters and am looking forward to the next book
It's interest reading someones diary, make it all seem more realistic.
As with most zombie books reality goes out of the window, but saying that I am enjoying this story.
I've became acquainted with the characters and am looking forward to the next book
July 31, 2025
An interesting take on the zombie apocalypse theme. This time, the shambling, zombie-like creatures are The Diseased, who are driven to bite others and even to eat them. But their motivation makes sense.
The story is set in the UK and is told through diary extracts - we are told by a fourteen-year-old girl in the prologue that it is 15 years after the catastrophe in 2020, and she is compiling together diary extracts from people who endured the first few months of the apocalypse, for the benefit of those who come after so they can understand what led to the current precarious survival of a few humans in scattered communities away from former population centres. The rest of the book consists of the journal extracts.
The situation for those trying to survive is made much more difficult by the onset of a severe winter, more like those still experienced in the Twentieth Century. The weather becomes an additional character in its own right, as characters have to try not to freeze as well as to risk raids on houses and supermarkets to find food.
Characters are varied: Mike regrets leaving his wife and daughter a few months previously and is trying to make his way back to their last known location; Michelle is a beauty salon sole trader who is slow at first to realise the situation creeping up on her; Dirk is a man from the USA, in England at the time of the breakdown, who makes friends with a pig; Harley works in a coffee shop and avoids human contact as much as possible so is in denial for weeks about what is happening outside her block of flats after the other residents leave; Don is an eleven-year-old schoolboy enjoying playing with his friends until his normal life is upended and he is separated from his parents in the chaos. Gradually they are brought together, the earlier ones becoming characters in the diaries of the later ones in the sequence. Through the snippets of knowledge that some of them have, especially Don, it becomes clear that the disaster originated in an attempt to cure disease.
There were a few quirks, such as the American sounding Mom instead of Mum, though I've read there are places in the Midlands that use this. Occasionally the narrative is unclear, for example, I wondered what happened to the pig when Mike and Dirk explore the office block where Mike believes his family are sheltering, as it's not mentioned till afterwards that they had left him tethered outside. Characters do have rather too much tendency to break into locked rooms only to find they have been locked for a good reason.
However, I found it interesting, and the story was not complete by the end, so I had hoped to read the next volume. Unfortunately it seems nothing more has been published and the first came out in 2020, so it doesn't seem that there will be a follow up. A pity as, although I had to suspend disbelief on some matters, not least that diaries would be written in such detail, it was about ordinary people - no one was an action hero or crack shot - and their survival and near misses were more believable than is usual in this genre. Overall, a 4 star rating.
The story is set in the UK and is told through diary extracts - we are told by a fourteen-year-old girl in the prologue that it is 15 years after the catastrophe in 2020, and she is compiling together diary extracts from people who endured the first few months of the apocalypse, for the benefit of those who come after so they can understand what led to the current precarious survival of a few humans in scattered communities away from former population centres. The rest of the book consists of the journal extracts.
The situation for those trying to survive is made much more difficult by the onset of a severe winter, more like those still experienced in the Twentieth Century. The weather becomes an additional character in its own right, as characters have to try not to freeze as well as to risk raids on houses and supermarkets to find food.
Characters are varied: Mike regrets leaving his wife and daughter a few months previously and is trying to make his way back to their last known location; Michelle is a beauty salon sole trader who is slow at first to realise the situation creeping up on her; Dirk is a man from the USA, in England at the time of the breakdown, who makes friends with a pig; Harley works in a coffee shop and avoids human contact as much as possible so is in denial for weeks about what is happening outside her block of flats after the other residents leave; Don is an eleven-year-old schoolboy enjoying playing with his friends until his normal life is upended and he is separated from his parents in the chaos. Gradually they are brought together, the earlier ones becoming characters in the diaries of the later ones in the sequence. Through the snippets of knowledge that some of them have, especially Don, it becomes clear that the disaster originated in an attempt to cure disease.
There were a few quirks, such as the American sounding Mom instead of Mum, though I've read there are places in the Midlands that use this. Occasionally the narrative is unclear, for example, I wondered what happened to the pig when Mike and Dirk explore the office block where Mike believes his family are sheltering, as it's not mentioned till afterwards that they had left him tethered outside. Characters do have rather too much tendency to break into locked rooms only to find they have been locked for a good reason.
However, I found it interesting, and the story was not complete by the end, so I had hoped to read the next volume. Unfortunately it seems nothing more has been published and the first came out in 2020, so it doesn't seem that there will be a follow up. A pity as, although I had to suspend disbelief on some matters, not least that diaries would be written in such detail, it was about ordinary people - no one was an action hero or crack shot - and their survival and near misses were more believable than is usual in this genre. Overall, a 4 star rating.
December 9, 2025
One of the better reads
Kept me engaged from beginning to end the characters were very well rounded and quite amusing in places not too gory.
Kept me engaged from beginning to end the characters were very well rounded and quite amusing in places not too gory.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews