Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

In Mary’s world, there are simple truths. 
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.

And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village. The fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power. And, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.

Now she must choose between her village and her future, between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded by so much death?

The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Carrie Ryan
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Hardcover: (March, 2009), ISBN-13: 978-0385736817
Paperback: (February, 2010) ISBN-13: 978-0385736824

Debut novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is a compelling action-packed story filled with the horrors of a world succumbed to zombies and is the first of a series.

Mary’s life within the village surrounded by the Forest of Hands and Teeth is too secluded for her after growing up listening to her mother’s stories of the ocean and what the world was like before the Return. She dreams of leaving the village one day to see the ocean for herself, and after a breach threatens her home, it looks like she’ll get her wish as she and her closest friends take a journey that leads them into an unknown world.

While Mary is torn between the boy she loves and the boy who loves her, she never loses faith in her mother’s stories and strives forward in their journey to see that what her mother said was true.

This book is captivating, compelling, and a fast-paced zombie thriller that will have you turning page after page and sitting on the edge of your seat until finished. Never have I been so pulled into a book, wrought with emotion, and nearly screaming out loud as things went bump in the night in the story and in reality. It pulls you in, holds you within its pages as you make your way through with Mary’s narration and intense internal dialog that has you feeling every emotion, every fear, and hearing every sound—especially those ongoing moans of the Unconsecrated.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a top-notch YA book that carries a lot of praise with it, which can be found on Carrie Ryan’s website: http://www.carrieryan.com.

Kudos to Carrie Ryan for writing such a brilliant piece of work and for coming up with a title that literally jumped off the shelf at me. It was the reason I bought the book!

Read the excerpt here.

The Dead-Tossed Waves continues the series, available now, as is book 3, The Dark and Hollow Places.