Books don’t make me cry. Movies don’t make me cry. Ocasionally I tear up a bit, but the actual crying part doesn’t happen.

It’s not that I don’t get emotional. I feel the sorrow, the excitement, the dread, the horror, the joy... the visceral twist in my gut of all of the emotions (sometimes more than one at once). But I don’t cry.

And then I read Feed by Mira Grant. I may not have all our bawled but I did have uncontrollable tears streaming from my eyes for a couple of minutes and for me that was a first.

Now this might be partially attributed to the fact that I barely slept last night and I’ve spend the day exhausted to the point of feeling sick with an intermittent headache and a disinterest in eating even the lovely chocolate crinkle cookies I baked last night to celebrate actually having people to watch GOT with for once (yay!) but I also think it says a lot about Mira Grant’s writing.

I felt George’s last moments more deeply than I feel many character deaths. Maybe it was George’s determination in the face of her inescapable death and Shaun’s devastating last act of love and kindness and the way it tore him up as viciously as, well a ravaging zombie. Whatever it was exactly, it made me cry. Mira Grant built this whole story to a great and terrible conclusion. She made me love the characters and believe in their fight for truth. I suspended disbelief and fell into this world of zombies and humans and monsters and friendship and I’m not ready to leave (thank goodness there are more books).