Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

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The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Synopsis: The story begins many years after the zombie apocalypse; we meet a young girl named Mary, who lives in a small village. There, she has a few simple truths: The Sisterhood is not to be questioned; they know what is best. The guardians are there to protect the village. And the unconsecrated will always be there, lurking just outside the gates surrounding the town. Always searching for their next victim. But then all of Mary's truths are failing: she finds herself questioning the Sisterhood, which has more secrets than it should. Then the fence is breached, and Mary's entire world changes. She and her lifelong friends must enter the Forest of Hands and Teeth that has always been home to the unconsecrated. Could there be other life in a place with so much death?

My review: I really wanted to like this book, I really did. But I couldn't. I couldn't connect with the main character at all, which was my main problem. She was willing to throw aside family, her friends, her village, the love of her life... to see the ocean. To see if the stories her mom told her about the olden days (read: our present) before the "unconsecrated" were true or not, and she was willing to throw everything away to have a glimpse at a body of water. Unfathomable.
I felt as though this book was split into two parts: the first part was great. The part in which Mary lives in the village, where she falls in love with Travis, and loses her mother to the unconsecrated outside of the village gates. Travis's brother, Harry, intends to marry Mary, but after her mother turns into a zombie, he turns his back on her. She is forced to join the Sisterhood, a very religious group of women that controls the lives of all of the people living in the village.
In the second part, which I greatly disliked: Mary, Travis, Harry, and her friend Cass all head into the Forest of Hands and Teeth, trying to find a way to the ocean. This half was suppose to be more action-packed, but I found the first half of the book far more interesting. In the second half, Mary seems to forget about the Sisterhood's secrets that haunted her throughout the first half. I would have much rather heard about what happened with the Sisterhood than hear that Mary killed a bunch of random zombies.

My rating: 2/5, Only because the first half of the book was so interesting!

xoxo,

Caryn Elizabeth