Sigh...I'm a die-hard zombie fan, so why do these zombie books keep disappointing me? This book not horrible, but it could've been so much better! 
 The whole story and setup sounded very promising at first. After the 'First Night', humanity now live in isolated communities, beyond which lies the 'Rot and Ruin', where zombies and bounty hunters run wild. So far so good... 
 The first sour note: The author seems to confuse the 1st person and 3rd person voice quite a lot - at times I thought I was reading it from the main character, Benny Imura's perspective, until it suddenly switches to the 3rd person. It was a jarring enough that I would sometimes re-read a sentence because it made no sense. 
 On to the main character - Yes, I know it's a YA novel, but reading the thoughts of an incredibly whiny and petulant 15 year gets rapidly tiresome, especially when the 'hero', comes across as an ungrateful and immature child, who's sole reason for hating his older brother is based solely on memories he had as an 18 month old baby. Who remembers anything at that age?? It's a bit hard to buy his rapid character transformation later on, based on his earlier characterization. 
 On the Imura brothers - When I first picked up the book, I thought it was interesting that the main characters were half-Japanese and Japanese. Later on, I got this nagging feeling that the only reason Jonathan Maberry made the main characters Japanese was so that he could stick in some cool Samurai lore in there and use weapons such as samurai swords and bokken. At some point, Tom Imura references their Samurai ancestors. I'm not sure this is in the same league as saying that all Chinese people know Kung-fu, but it's pretty close... 
 The book constantly telegraphs ominous events/places - we keep hearing about 'Sunset Hollow', for example... (view spoiler)[so I was suspecting Sunset Hollow to be something horrific but in the end it turned out be a giant letdown - it's just a gated community where Tom keeps his zombies tied up to be 'quieted' later, that was *totally* worth all that ominous foreshadowing (hide spoiler)] 
 In general, there's too much telling, and not enough showing. 
 When the author/characters tells us about something is heart-rendingly and soul-crushingly horrific, is really nowhere near that. (but then again, I've read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, so basically this book is like My Little Pony compared to that!) 
 Also, awkward romantic subplot is awkward. 
 Not sure if I'd read the rest of the series - I love the world-building and where the story's headed to, but I just don't care about any of the characters.