TWO WEEKS' NOTICE by Rachel Caine is the second installment in The Revivalist series and the author has devised an inventive new way to rewrite a zombie tale with a new spin. Many of the living dead stories I've read have the zombies as the antagonists; the evil entities that the hero or heroine have to kill in order to survive. They are usually the classic slow-moving, flesh-eating meat puppets and always the bad guys in every tale. Caine's new take on the Undead has them as the heroine and the victim of a corporate conspiracy by drug company Pharmadene. The heroine of this urban fantasy thriller is Bryn Davis, a gutsy ex-military woman who comes across as fairly complex in her mission to uncover the corruption in Pharmadene, run a company, juggle a slow-burning romance, comfort other revived victims, and handle the issue that if not for a vital injection she would be a rotting corpse.

At first glance, Bryn Davis appears to be your average young, career-oriented woman but with one minor flaw -- she's the undead now. In a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bryn was killed at her funeral home job for poking her nose where it didn't belong. Luckily, she was revived using an experimental drug called Returne and now she relies on getting these injections daily or she will decompose and eventually die a slow and excruciating death.

At the opening of TWO WEEKS' NOTICE, we learn that Bryn is now the new funeral director, given this position by the FBI, who is investigating the Pharmadene Company that created the Returne drug. Pharmadene experimented and killed many of its employees in its research of the drug. Essentially as compensation for being killed and revived, and also with the agreement that Bryn will help them, the FBI has allowed Bryn to take over the funeral home.

Bryn has an interesting cast of characters surrounding and helping her. There is Patrick McAllister, her wealthy boyfriend and former head of security for Pharmadene. He is also the one to revive Bryn when she was murdered because of his love for her. There is a slow progression in the romance between Patrick and Bryn from the first book to this one, but it is well worth the wait. Patrick appears to be a multi-dimensional character with many handy skills -from combat to weapons to those in the bedroom. From Joe the mercenary-turned bodyguard to Riley Block, the ice-cold and by-the-book FBI agent handling the Pharmadene investigation, there doesn't seem to be any fluff or filler where the characterizations are concerned. From the cast of funeral home workers to the evil Jane, who I for one was looking forward to getting her karma returned a hundredfold, you will be transfixed from the first page to the last.

Book Summary

In  New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine’s “thrilling”* Revivalist series, Bryn Davis finds out that making a living can be rough if you’re already dead...
 
After dying and being revived with the experimental drug Returne, Bryn Davis is theoretically free to live her unlife—with regular doses to keep her going. But Bryn knows that the government has every intention of keeping a tight lid on Pharmadene’s life-altering discovery, no matter the cost.
 
Thankfully, some things have changed for the better; her job at the rechristened Davis Funeral Home is keeping her busy and her fragile romance with Patrick McCallister is blossoming—thanks in part to their combined efforts in forming a support group for Returne addicts. But when some of the group members suddenly disappear, Bryn wonders if the government is methodically removing a threat to their security, or if some unknown enemy has decided to run the zombies into the ground…