- I loved The Forest of Hands and Teeth (click for my review)
I also recommend:
- World War Z by Max Brooks
- Feed by Mira Grant
Summary from GoodReads:
There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister’s face before Annah left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the Horde as they swarmed the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah would like to forget the morning Elias left her for the Recruiters.
Annah’s world stopped that day, and she’s been waiting for Elias to come home ever since. Somehow, without him, her life doesn’t feel much different than the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Until she meets Catcher, and everything feels alive again.
But Catcher has his own secrets. Dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah has longed to forget, and to a future too deadly to consider. And now it’s up to Annah: can she continue to live in a world covered in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return’s destruction?
My Review:
I took a few days after finishing The Dark and Hollow Places to collect my thoughts before writing this review, because I’m conflicted about it. I loved The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and while I wasn’t a huge fan of The Dead-Tossed Waves, I still had faith in Carrie Ryan and the world she’s created in these books – because there is so much that is fantastic about it.
I think, though, that the problem is there is so much focus on love, falling in love and desperate emotions that it makes the actual terror take a back seat. Yes, it’s still there and prominent, but as a reader, I was so caught up in who loves who and how they are going to be together that it was easy to discount.
It wasn’t that way in The Forest of Hands and Teeth – there was actual DEATH in that book to a main character, there was heartbreak, there were circumstances that molded Mary into a strong woman who pursued what she dreamed of. Between Gabry (who plays a secondary part in The Dark and Hollow Places) and Annah, I did not find much of that strength at all.
I appreciate the message that Carrie Ryan was trying to impart, beauty is not just skin deep, and the emotional issues that can result due to guilt and betrayal, but it just didn’t work for me the way the first book did. That is disappointing – because I had such incredibly high hopes. I just felt that this and the previous book went a little too far off the probability (well, as probable as a zombie book could be) with immunity, hot air balloons and several “near-death” circumstances.
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