Fair warning – This review will have spoilers for Dead City so if you haven’t read it yet, stop now! Speaking of which, you can read my review for Dead City here. 😀

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Welcome back to Dead City… The undead underside of NYC! Back is the awesome Omega team to stop the Unlucky 13’s most recent plot to gain power over the living.

Blue Moon (Dead City, #2) by James Ponti

When Molly Bigelow discovered that zombies shared New York with humans, she didn’t think life could get more shocking. Then she learned that her mother was once one of the greatest zombie killers ever—and she discovered that her dead mother is not technically dead at all (although she isn’t alive, either).

Molly’s efforts to keep these secrets and to help her Omega team track down the identity of the original thirteen zombies will take her from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade to New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Her loyalties to friends and family will be put to the test. And her life will be changed in ways she never could have imagined.

Blue Moon picks up where Dead City left off. Our team has just been suspended and are awaiting their trial to decide whether they can be Omegas anymore. But “Omega Today, Omega Forever” is not something you can just turn off. And it doesn’t help that Molly keeps catching glimpses of her mother. The mother that is supposed to be dead but saved her from Marek.

So after Molly corners her to finally get some answers, she learns that maybe having an undead mother isn’t so bad. Especially if she can save Molly’s team with two words… “Baker’s Dozen”. Unfortunately, those words also set our team on a trajectory that elevates the stakes for Omegas everywhere. And Molly can’t tell her friends where she heard that code phrase either.

You see, “Baker’s Dozen” is the code phrase for the Omega Top-Secret project that tracks the Unlucky 13. The only way to gain entry into the project is to be invited by a current team. Once in, you become intimately aware of the past and present lives of that undead crew. Each member is cataloged with their affiliation to the crew, last known whereabouts, and what they bring to the table. Constantly checked, updated, and monitored, our team goes deeper into the World of the Undead for answers. Doing so, they uncover a major plot to take over control, not just of Dead City, but of New York City too.

Furthermore, with an Omega Team as smart as these, nothing stays secret for long. New players emerge and old players return. Trust is tested and the true history of the Omegas is revealed.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns this story took! Some plot points were easy to pick out but it’s written for middle schoolers so I didn’t hold that against the book. That also didn’t detract from my enjoyment as the ending really caught me by surprise! A clean, fun, action story with even smarter and loyal friends – I would recommend this series to any of my friends with younger kids.

Let me leave you with my favorite passage…..

Finally, no matter what he’s making, there will be one point during the meal when he drops the accent, gets serious, and claims that this one particular food provides the key to understanding the universe. He’ll literally say, “You see, Molly, a peanut butter sandwich is just like life,” or “Girls, if you can figure out what toppings to put on a pizza, you can figure out how to make the world a better place.” (For the record, the peanut butter sandwich is like life because sometimes the simplest things provide the most enjoyment, and pizza toppings teach you the value of diversity, bringing out the best in all of us.)

This night was no exception. The jambalaya was incredibly good, and the ridiculous cajun accent was incredibly bad. (Funny but bad.) And how is jambalaya like life?

“Look at all the ingredients,” he said a few bites in. “It has crawfish, sausage, peppers, onions, rice, all with unique tastes. But if you add just a little bit of hot sauce, the taste of all those things changes. It’s amazing how just a little bit of something in the right place can change the world around it.”

The next, and last, book is Dark Days and I’m excited to see how this ends for our team! 💜

Reviews 4 Star Review James Ponti Middle Grade Series SeriesTF2020 Urban Fantasy Zombies