The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Five Stars

See this family?



Or this family?



Take a good long hard look at all of their faces.

See how happy, how healthy, how loving they are. Imagine you've known them your entire life and that you love each one more than life itself.

Now imagine if you were one of the people in that photograph with them.

Now imagine that I told you and all those other people standing and smiling with you that I was going to kill you all so that I could go for a trip to the beach...

Okay, now you know the basic plot of The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

I've mentioned before that I have a love/hate relationship with zombies. On one hand, I love reading zombie books and watching zombie movies. On the other I will then spend two weeks wide awake clutching a baseball bat while waiting for the shuffle of feet and the moans of the undead outside my bedroom door.


I actually have something like this in my house...

I love the chase as things fall a part and slowly people are picked off one by one.

That's the thing that's almost a constant in the Zombie genre - is the psychological breakdown of the group. Usually in a zombie group, you'll find the differing personalities and human flaws are what slowly kills the group - not so much the zombies.

The difference between most of the zombie media, and this book, is that usually you watch things unfold from the sole sane person who is trying to keep all the crazies from turning themselves into meat patties and throwing themselves to the horde.

In this story you get to watch the gradual mental breakdown of a woman until she's willing to sacrifice anything and anyone just to live out a damn fantasy.

Okay, so I know the point of it is that there are dreams and dreams are important like freedom is important and you must always follow your dreams blah de blah blah!

Sorry, I'm a very pragmatic person.

Kill zombies first, fulfill life long dream of of seeing ocean second.

Yet, despite my utter hatred of the main character by the time I finished this novel, I still can't give it less than five stars.

I can't give it less than five stars because I spent most of this book gripping the bed covers in suspense. The characters were all great, realistic and interesting. Mary's decent into madness was COMPLETELY understandable and very well documented and this book was very well written and paced very well.

Then, of course, I had the satisfaction of knowing that if it had been me - I totally could have survived better than them. And that, my friends, is the biggest satisfaction you can get out of the zombie genre.

Oh yeah, baby.

My Zombie Plan totally beats the crap out of their Zombie plan.

So what's YOUR zombie plan?