The Forest of Hands and Teeth – Carrie Ryan

     Mary lives a simple life until her parents get bitten by the Unconsecrated and turn into them. This throws Mary’s life into chaos. Her brother refuses to talk to her, her village sees her as bad luck, and no one is willing to marry her any more. Since everyone in their forest-surrounded village either has to get married or join the priesthood, she is forced to become an acolyte. The church is everything in this one last bastion of protection from the Forest and the Undying who live there. When a mysterious stranger appears in the village and the church authorities hide her away, Mary begins to suspect there are more survivors in the Forest and things the church is hiding from them all.

     I read this series a few years ago (before the big zombie revival) and I enjoyed it greatly. After reading some other reviews, I went back and reread the first book. I probably shouldn’t have. I absolutely detest the character of Mary. Here she is supposed to have grown up years, decades even, after the zombie apocalypse, in this idyllic little village (minus the ever present zombies) and she never seems to think beyond what she wants at the moment. It would have been fine to write the character that way if she was supposed to be a teenager (and zombies were a new thing) but she is supposedly a fully grown adult. The summary (on the book as well as the one I wrote) makes it seem like this is going to be a story of intrigue and discovery. It wasn’t. It was Mary being selfish, Mary being resigned, Mary being selfish again (on purpose this time), Mary appearing to stop sucking as a main character, and then Mary being selfish and sucking but getting her greatest wish while managing to get everyone she cared about killed in the process. I remember reading the first 3 books one after the other and the short stories as they came out. I also remember them being good. I am definitely going to go back and read the other books (since they aren’t about Mary) and see if I can rediscover why I liked them so much. If you want to try this book out (because you like zombies and are a masochist), get it from the library before you pay for it.