The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (Review by Bella Aire)

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, when the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness.

Now 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?

Review:
This book came as a huge surprise to me. The cover didn’t do much for me; it has a bit of a dark, depressed undertone to it. Dark, depressed books aren’t my style in general, but I do my best to avoid cover bias. So assuming this didn’t affect my judgment, we’ll move on to the summary. The summary was a bit out-there for me. It seemed to be full of a “the world is ending” premise which works for some but not for me.

Normally I wouldn’t pick up a book to review that seems as contrary to my temperament as The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but the feedback it was getting, and the excited buzz surrounding this novel caught my interest. So I decided to try it out.

So what exactly surprised me? Truthfully, it was how over-the-top amazing I found The Forest! I don’t advertise my ratings in reviews. In fact, they are outlawed at the NSCG blog. I do this because everyone sees books differently- how many of my favorite books have gotten one or two stars on Amazon from a few of the customers? But I do like to keep a private record of my personal ratings for books.

I’m going to emphasize how incredible this book is by breaking my little rule and posting a few of my ratings today.

I gave The Forest of Hands and Teeth five stars. I cannot adequately explain just how rare five stars are from me in my personal ratings. I started reviewing seriously in October, and in the past five months I have only found four books to which I have given fives (which books? To name: North of Beautiful, If I Stay, The Secret Life of Prince Charming, and Eyes Like Stars (giveaway here!)- two of which have not had their reviews posted yet). Note: this is not to say I haven’t had some great 4.8s, etc out there. 

What really shocked me about The Forest is that its five-star rating seemed to have come out of nowhere. For my other fives, I was slightly biased because I had approached the books with expectation and some excitement. North of Beautiful was by one of my favorite authors, If I Stay had already gotten a ton of hype, Prince Charming was written by an award winning author, and Eyes Like Stars was right up my alley with all the fantasy. So I already had a good idea that I was going to like them.

I started reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth in a more professional manner by doing the unbiased thing. So its five star hit me in the gut.

My little ramble will end here so that I may get to the point. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is an eerie, unpredictable, and slightly gloomy page turner. Not at all my “type”.

But I couldn’t help but love it.

Why? I’m going to go ahead and give all the credit to Mary, the heroine. Her enduring hope will hit readers and stick with them, as it did with me. Even in the darkest of situations, Mary has this sense of hope that brings light to any circumstance. Her dreams set her apart from the slew of heroines I’ve read about in the past year. These dreams are both her saving grace and her

downfall.

But it feels wrong to give all the praise to Mary without mentioning her obviously talented creator, Carrie Ryan. So thank you, Carrie, for writing such a remarkable debut novel (that’s right- this is her first published book). I will certainly be looking for more of your work in the future.

~bella aire~

Purchase The Forest of Hands and Teeth here.
Check out Carrie Ryan's site here.