My 18th read of 2012 was The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. I give it one star. And I'll tell you why.
OK, so as most of you probably know, I'm not enamored with the paranormal romance genre. I kind of shudder when I walk past that section at B&N, wishing it didn't exist. I just don't dig it. No offense if it is your thang. This book keeps the romance part-- letting us experience another super awesome love triangle-- but branches off down post-apocalyptic lane into zombie territory.
The protagonist is a girl named Mary whom I found always fickle but only mostly ridiculous. She was born and has grown up in a small village in the middle (maybe?) of a forest known as the Forest of Hands and Teeth because of the zombie population that inhabits it. The village is kind of run by the Guardians who are really the puppets of the Sisterhood-- which I gathered were a group of women kind of like nuns who control everyone and everything, making sure everyone follows the rules but also keeping the people fed and clothed and sheltered. The only Sister you really get to know is the big kahuna, Sister Tabitha.
Sidenote: I kind of thought of M. Night Shyamalan's movie, "The Village," as I read this, if that rings any bells for anyone.
OK, so back to Mary. She is caught in a love triangle when a childhood friend, Harry, whom she is apparently not interested in at all, begins to show interest. Before anything can happen, though, Mary's mother (stricken by grief b/c her husband is gone) gets too close to the fence surrounding the village (probably because she was searching for her husband among the zombies), is presumably bitten by one of the Unconsecrated (aka zombies) and becomes Infected.
Oh, and turns out, in this world, a zombie bite eventually causes death followed by a coming back to life, whereupon one is a zombie, or Unconsecrated, as the village calls it. A zombie bite can work quickly or slowly, depending on the severity. If there is time, the Infected one can choose death so as to never experience the change, or they can ask to be allowed to become Unconsecrated and released into the Forest. Mary's mother chooses the latter, presumably because she hopes to find her husband out there and live a zombie life together. I can't even believe I'm typing this.
Mary watches this process happen to her mother, and is then released into the hands of the Sisterhood so she can take time to mentally recover.
And that is only the first two short chapters.
What follows this is even more emotionally and mentally exhausting. You meet Travis, Harry's younger brother and the object of Mary's affections. You meet Cass, Mary's BFF and the one who is engaged to Travis but loves Harry. Huh? Oh, you also meet Jed, Mary's brother, and his wife Beth who is Harry's and Travis's sister.
This group, along with an orphan boy, venture out of the village along fenced-in pathways that, for reasons unknown to me (and everyone else), no one in the village has ever gone down, after their village's fences are breached and the Unconsecrated come flooding in.
There is a lot of zombie killing. There is a lot of confusion and sighing and crying and softly touching one another's faces...in the rain.
Mary's main motivation throughout all of this is to see the ocean, which she isn't sure actually exists but which her mother used to tell her stories/legends about. There even comes a point when she explicitly says she wants to see the ocean more than she wants Travis, who is supposed to be the love of her life. Um...
I don't know what else to say about this book. It has an intriguing premise, but I found it poorly executed. I got so sick of Mary's internal dialog about being surrounded by death, and hopelessness, but the ocean!, and on and on. I felt like the whole book was one adolescent emotional breakdown after another. Too much for me.
I guess there are more books to come, though I don't know if it's a continuation or not because the little excerpt included at the end of the book seemed to have different characters. Either way, I will not be reading any more of this tale.
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