The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Obvious spoilers follow: I love zombies, so I was interested in this book despite having been told it wasn't good. The zombies thing might be what's saving this from being a 1 star, I'm not sure.

All the characters were boring, I didn't care for a single one of them. (No, I take that back, I cared for the dog, Argos. What? I'm a dog lover.) They didn't even make me angry at any point in time, they irked me at best. I've read other books where the characters at least make me angry enough to care. This book just made me entirely indifferent towards them. Mary brings up small bits of their personalities that used to be, like "I remember when Cass was all smiles and sunshine" or something, but we come into the story when Cass (her best friend) isn't like this, when we meet her she's just as bland as the others. So why should I care about how she used to be? I also don't understand why Mary fell in love with Travis. In fact, I didn't even get that she had fallen in love with him when he was ill, I thought she was telling me she had been in love with him for a while. That wasn't the case though, because at some point she clarifies that she had a crush on him before, and is in love with him now. Regardless of when it happened, there is no chemistry between them, and Mary could hardly ever make up her mind about how she felt about him. She cared, she didn't care, she just wants someone to marry her, no she wants him to marry her, she was in love with him and wanted only him, but he's not enough for her, but he totally is enough for her! And so on.

Mary also mentions how she remembers when she and Cass were once the closest of friends, or when she and Jed were once very close siblings, but we never see any of this we just see her lamenting the loss of a relationship with them that seems to have existed way before the events of this book. How am I supposed to care when she mourns a relationship I've never seen? This is why I didn't even care when her mother died, and all I ever know is that at some point her father died, otherwise we don't hear about him except when speaking of her mother's love for her father. If I don't get the full impact of what she lost, then I don't care that she lost them. Would it really have killed Ryan to have fleshed out some of the relationships a bit?

The "revelations" in this book are so badly written that I feel no impact, no excitement or sadness or anything that the author probably intended for me to feel. They had so little impact that it would take me a few more sentences to realize that Ryan meant for me to react to the event. The Sisterhood is keeping secrets you say? Well, okay then... Oh noes, Gabrielle's been turned into one of the Unconsecrated? Well I- wait, why are you now focusing on Travis and the fact that he's kissing you? Oh I see, it's the greatly desired first kiss, although I- Oh back to Gabrielle? Okay, yeah, that sucks immensely that she was- oh, back to Travis then and the fact that he kissed you. Cool, I guess.

And that's another thing, how is it that this girl still manages to be able to focus on things that relate to Travis, things like jealousy when her entire village is being eaten by zombies. They're right at the beginning of the path where they escaped the breach, she hears Travis call Cass "darling" or something, and she has the time to be jealous over it. Your village is dying, Mary, this is so not the time for this. She does this several times throughout the book in moments where a normal person would be thinking, "OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL DOOMED" yet she manages to focus on, "Woooee my true love likes my bff, woeeee".

Also the ending was pretty silly too: So she steps into the forest, gets attacked by zombies and her brother then runs after her. She reaches the ocean, we assume her brother died somewhere in the struggle, and Cass, Jacob, Harry and the dog (omg Argos!) are left to starve to death back where the fences were. That's if the fences even hold long enough for them to die of starvation instead of being eaten alive once the Unconsecrated get through. So congratulations, Mary! You got to the ocean, and everyone's dead! Wooo!

The world, at least, was interesting enough for me to want to see more of that. I just like zombies that much. I just never want to see Mary again (I want to see Argos though) and I'll be hoping that Ryan will be better at making me care about her characters. I know there's a sequel, so I may read it. Eventually.