The Forrest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (The Forrest of Hands and Teeth #1)

Title: The Forrest of Hands and Teeth Author: Carrie Ryan Pages: 308 (paperback) 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 in so much death? [STAR] "A bleak but gripping story...Poignant and powerful."-Publishers Weekly, Starred "A postapocalyptic romance of the first order, elegantly written from title to last line."-Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies series and Leviathan "Intelligent, dark, and bewitching, The Forest of Hands and Teethtransitions effortlessly between horror and beauty. Mary's world is one that readers will not soon forget."-Cassandra Clare, bestselling author of City of Bones "Opening The Forest of Hands and Teeth is like cracking Pandora's box: a blur of darkness and a precious bit of hope pour out. This is a beautifully crafted, page-turning, powerful novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it."-Melissa Marr, bestselling author ofWicked Lovely and Ink Exchange "Dark and sexy and scary. Only one of the Unconsecrated could put this book down."-Justine Larbalestier, author of How to Ditch Your Fairy From the Hardcover edition" -Goodreads DNF'd @ 142 pages Okay so here we go. Firstly, I want to quickly mention that I really wanted to enjoy this book. I had heard negative reviews, but I wanted to see for myself and after meeting Carrie Ryan, I was ready for this book. I DNF'd this book because of a few reasons. The first one is that it was putting me in a reading slump. I know what puts me in a slump, and it's forcing myself through a book I'm not enjoying. Every time I went to pick this up and I read more than 20 pages, I found myself hating the time I spent on the book. Every 30 pages or so, I would put the book down and feel exhausted. I didn't want to pick up another book even though I wanted to get to so many things on my shelves. My actual problems with this story starts with our characters. The characters in the story felt like a washed up, typical YA dystopia heroine except she wasn't special. She had a family member who betrays her, a boy who loves her, and then the guy she's actually interested in. The love triangle in this book actually made me angry, and though I dislike love triangles, some I can deal with. This one made me roll eyes so much, I thought they were going to fall out of my head. Our main character is so selfish and caught up in this idea that boy #2 is who she will marry that she completely ignores boy #1 who actually is marrying her. She is so selfish because unless she is happy, no one is happy. We are following her first person narrative, so we get her thoughts as she has them. I don't know if I found this writing style to be annoying because it showed how selfish she was or because it showed how simple minded(?) she was. My last big issue with this book was that there was nothing that was really moving the plot forward. The sisterhood was boring and didn't raise any questions in my mind, the zombies (idk what they really called them) were to themselves and only appeared once in the 50% of the book I read, and there was nothing else going on. I will be trying another Carrie Ryan book, but unfortunately, this one wasn't for me.