CABOT, Meg and the Twitterverse. Fashionably Undead. Read by Sarah Drew. BBC Audiobooks America, 2010. 9 MP3 Files – Approx. 1 Hour 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED].
GARCIA, LEILANE
Meg Cabot (Meggin Patricia Cabot) was born on February 1, 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana. She is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for both adults and tweens/teens, and used to write under the pen names: Meggin Cabot, Patricia Cabot and Jenny Carroll; but now writes only under Meg Cabot. The author has written over 70 books and she is best known for The Princess Diaries series – which was made into two hit movies by Disney – the Mediator series, Boy series and Heather Wells mystery series. Meg Cabot currently lives in Key West with her husband and two cats.
This audiobook was collaboratively constructed with more than 50 fiction lovers of her Twitter followers, the Twitterverse (akin to blogs and the blogosphere, the Twitterverse is simply the universe of people who use Twitter and the conversations taking place within that sphere). It's exclusively for audio and "it’s short, free, and full of zombies".
The book is called Fashionably Undead and the main character is Carly, a receptionist at Guru Fashion Agency that knows a lot about fashion but she didn't expect that models were zombies.
In the first two chapters, Carly gets a S.O.S text message from the sexy new guy Jake. She searches for him along with her sassy deskmate Joyce and they find him after just fighting off zombie models. Soon, she learns the fashion agency she works is just a cover for a league that fights undead creatures: the ZFT (Zombie Force Terminators). Coco Chanel is the zombie maker and Carly is the only person who can stop the zombie diseases: she is the Keeper. Her saliva can cure the zombies because of the genes she inherited from her part vampire great-great-grandfather. He created ZFT and a serum that could end all of this but ZFT lost it and ZFT is now is in possession of the chief fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld. She freaks out a quite of bit with all these revelations but Jake and the others manage to convince her to go to Fashion Week and pretend to be one of the zombified models to get back the serum from the famous designer.
The next three chapters are about the retrieve of the serum. Carly and Jake (as model and manager) go to Fashion Week. She is forced to wear a mini haute couture dress (that flashed her Sponge Bib underwear) and to walk on the runway. Before entering she uses some of her saliva in one of the models, causing a commotion. When she enters she trips on purpose in Karl Lagerfeld’s lap snatching the serum from his neck. The sequence of events involves a photosensitive bomb, a bedazzler (an appliance used to fasten rhinestones, studs and patches to material, clothes and accessories), a fight against Karl Lagerfeld and Jake being bitten by a zombie, and ends up in Carly – who was starting to fall for Jake – kissing the guy which stops the his zombification.
Chapters six and seven are about a photo shoot. The ZFT reveals to Carly that Coco Chanel is the Queen of the Zombies and is still undead and existing. Her next step is to crash into a photo shoot using the catering services as disguise and to put the serum on the champagne. The last time ZFT attempted to do this to Jake’s brother, Zack, died and this convinces Carly to accept her destiny.
In the last two chapters, Carly along with the model 121, Sammy, one she had cured earlier, and the ZFT had until midnight to drop the serum on the champagne. Once Carly managed to do it, the serum doesn’t work so Carly does the ultimate desperate attempt to save everybody lives and revenge Zack’s death, she kissed Coco Chanel. The designer realized she was the Keeper but it was too late, the undead fashion queen was now really dead; she received a kiss of death. Everybody, including Karl Lagerfed, thanks Carly for freeing them, they were fashion slaves and fashion victims of Coco Chanel’s zombie diseases. The last shocking information for Carly is that Tim Gunn is the head of ZFT and is on the way to control the situation and that there are still zombies in Hollywood to fight. The story ends with Carly and Jake kissing while the crowd cheers and Jake saying to Carly: “I guest it’s true, you really are a keeper”.
The audiobook experience is quite different because the listener has to be concentrated. It’s a great option for long travels like road trips or long flights. I highly recommend for visually impaired people because he or she can better sense the characters emotion through the narrator’s voice. Considering the general public, the story is for young adults (YA) and adults, zombie lovers and specially fashion lovers because there are many pop culture and fashion references (Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, Jimmy Choo, Tim Gunn, etc.). The English level is intermediate to advance and the tricky parts are more on the fashion references than in the vocabulary itself. The story definitely achieves what it aims: a somewhat romantic comedy story about fashion and zombies. The main characters are easy to relate, Carly’s thoughts are very comical, quote: “I mentally slapped myself…”. And Jake brings the right tone for a romance in a short story. I also highly recommend it for Chick Lit lovers because the author, Meg Cabot (a Chick Lit queen), always addresses humorously the issues of contemporary women – the main characteristic of Chick Lit genre – even if it has to do with zombies, a very popular fictional topic of these days.
1 Garcia, Leilane: é aluna do curso de Letras – Tradução Inglês/Português das FMU e bacharel em Turismo pela Universidade Anhembi Morumbi.
