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

My Rating: 4/5
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?

I want to start by saying that I really, really, really enjoyed reading this book! It completely captured my attention and provided a very interesting storyline that made me want to keep reading. Now, having said that, there were also a lot of things I didn't like as much about this book. But I still really enjoyed it, so it would be hard for me to give it a bad rating.

The main character, Mary, lives in a world that's very bounded by tradition and rules, similar to a lot of other books I've read. Their village is surrounded by Unconcentrated, which are pretty much zombies- people become Infected, they die, and they come back as Unconcentrated, whose only goal is to infect others.

The setting- Mary's village- was very mysterious and you could tell there were a lot of secrets just waiting to be discovered. Mary was a very interesting round character which I really liked, but sometimes she just got on my nerves. She was always longing for something better, a hope. I think, though, she never really found that. She fell in love with a fellow village member Travis, but I don't think their relationship was well developed, and it seemed very unoriginal, and it didn't even seem to fit with Mary's never-satisfied personality (but I think the author did a good job of handling that issue- you'll know what I mean if you've read the book). I never could figure out why she liked him more than his older brother who actually liked her back, but the love triangle/square was really good. The thing I disliked the most about this book was that there really wasn't any twists or surprises. The ending was actually fairly predictable once you were pretty far into it, with one minor twist that I was really grateful for. I thought there was so much potential for mystery in the whole story of the village, but it didn't really happen.

But I still really enjoyed reading this book! And I'm really excited to read to sequel, because I think it might wrap up some of the story of what happened to the village and Mary, and maybe provide some more suspense along the way.

I would definitly recommend this book to anyone! It's very interesting and original.