Review: Can You Survive The Zombie Apocalypse? by Max Brallier

Book: Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? (Max Brallier)
Order A Copy: Amazon | Book Depository
Pages: 288
Genre: Horror / Science Fiction / Create Your Own Adventure
How Did I Get This Book: For Review (Galley Grab)
Publication Date: February 8th, 2011
Description (From Goodreads): Inside these pages lies unspeakable horror. Bloodsplattering, brain-impaling, flesh-devouring horror. You’ve probably read your fair share of zombie stories. But this time it’s different. No longer can you sit idle as a bunch of fools make all the wrong moves. All hell is about to break loose—and YOU have a say in humanity’s survival. You have choices to make. Moral dilemmas. Strategic decisions. Weapons. Vehicles. Will you be a hero? Or will you cover your own ass at all costs? Can you withstand the coming hours, days, weeks, and months? Or will you die amidst the chaos and violence of a zombie uprising? Or, worst of all, will you become one of them?

I did not really know what to expect when I began reading Can You Survive The Zombie Apocalypse? by Max Brallier, but I was determined to keep an open mind. I have to be honest with you - I had an absolute riot on this gruesome, crazy, zombie adventure.

If you have ever read this type of book before, you know the setup. For those of you who haven't, I'll give you a brief overview on how things go down. The story starts the same for everyone, but early on in the book you are confronted with your first choice. In this book, you have to choose where to go - I believe you could take the train to Brooklyn, take a taxi out of town or return to your apartment. Once you make your decision, you flip to the given page and follow your adventure from there. This makes for a really fun and unique story - because you can actually change it. The goal of this book is of course, to survive the zombie apocalypse of Manhattan - but be warned, you may not make it out alive. Everything depends on what your decisions are.

When it came time for me to review this book, I had a difficult time assigning a rating - simply because it is not like your average, normal book. You cannot read the entire thing - you only read certain sections. Therefore, I do not know how all of the adventures turn out. I can tell you that my particular adventure was awesome. It involved some crazy marines, a zombie-awareness parade and some sort of underwater military bike.

However, I was a little disappointed with the ending to my story. I had no idea that it was over, I thought there was a typo. It ended way to abruptly - at the time I was still alive, but the zombies were closing in. So I am going to assume that help arrived in time and I lived happily ever after.

The format itself is easy enough to follow, but if you are reading it on an ereader it takes some getting used to. I read it on my nook and after a few tries I figured out that you have to add 14 pages on to the numbers given (*when you make a decision it will tell you to flip to a new page number). This was for the ARC version though, it may be fixed for the actual release.


I also want to warn you that it can get a pretty graphic at times. Now, you would think that this goes without saying, but you never know. It certainly did not bother me, but it may bother some of you.


Can Your Survive the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brallier was a lot a fun. If you are looking for a fun, quick read - I would definitely give this a try. I would love to reread it sometime and make different decisions, just to see what happens. I know that you meet different characters in each of the story lines and I wonder if you can survive in more than one.