Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

By: Carrie Ryan

My Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Genre: Horror, scifi, dystopia

Page Count: 310

Synopsis: 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 about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, 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?

This review will be spoiler free

Happy Sunday bookworms, November has already been crazy busy for me even though it has only been about a week and a half! But I always love writing my blog posts, it gives me a nice break from the stress of university. This book is one I read quite a while ago and only recently remembered when I was doing my Halloween posts. I realized that I had never actually done a review for it, so I want to remedy that today. This book was definitely unique, there are not that many YA zombie stories out there (as I discovered while trying to make my recommendation post a couple weeks ago). I liked the world building of the sort of post-apocalyptic society and all of the social dynamics that came with that. The story itself was not that complex, but there were some nice twists and the suspense element was definitely there. I will say that I wish there had been more character development going on. i realize that in a book of this length it is hard to deliver great character development and a well fleshed out story, but at the same time I feel like it could have been done better.

I really enjoyed the imagery of the book, and even though the story was predictable it was still a fun read. I think I just wasn’t blown away by the story like I wanted to be. It had all the pieces of a great book but somehow didn’t fit them together seamlessly in a way that would make me want to give it 4 or 5 stars. If you are interested in a good dystopian story that is pretty unique in the YA genre I would give this book a read for sure.

 

What are your thoughts? What do you guys think of zombie novels? because I found myself wondering why we don’t see more of them in YA when they are so prolific in Television and movie genres!