If you loved R’s deadpan asides about airport living, his awkward etiquette lessons with M, and the grim chuckle of eating Perry’s brain only to inherit his memories, you’ll have a blast with Breathers. Andy is a newly undead guy who attends zombie support groups, navigates dating (yes, with another zombie), and skewers the absurdity of the living’s prejudice with razor-sharp wit. It leans into the same gallows humor that made R’s inner monologue so winning while doubling down on social satire.

You connected with how R and Julie’s shaky truce in the stadium blossoms into something tender and transformative. In My Life as a White Trash Zombie, Angel wakes up undead and—between cravings—stumbles into work at a morgue, new purpose, and a messy, genuine romance. Like R’s protectiveness and clumsy courtship on that abandoned road trip, Angel’s relationship is prickly, funny, and heartfelt, proving affection can grow even when your heart technically doesn’t beat.

If R’s evolution—from groaning airport drifter to someone who literally kickstarts his own heartbeat because of Julie—hit you hard, The Girl With All the Gifts will, too. Melanie starts as a restrained, fungus-infected child, but through her bond with Miss Justineau and the choices she makes on the road, she redefines what humanity means. It mirrors R’s journey beyond the Boneys: intimate stakes, moral growth, and a quietly shattering, humane payoff.

Julie’s insistence on hope—painting over ruin, building a life in the stadium, believing people can be better than the Boneys—echoes through Station Eleven. After the collapse, a Traveling Symphony performs Shakespeare because “survival is insufficient.” If R’s final balcony moment and the community’s tentative rebirth moved you, this gently luminous novel offers the same post‑apocalyptic warmth: fractured lives stitched together by memory, love, and art.

Part of Warm Bodies’ charm is living inside R’s skull—his sardonic thoughts in the airport, his conflicted feelings while carrying Julie through the city, even the way Perry’s memories blur into his own. Zombie, Ohio keeps you in that headspace: Peter wakes up dead, narrates his afterlife with wit and curiosity, and investigates his own death. It’s another smart, confessional undead POV that balances mystery, humor, and unexpected heart.