The Forest of Hands and Teeth – Carrie Ryan

I am wondering which is more cool in paranormal genre. After the plethora of vampire book there are some good zombie teen fiction now available. Are zombies the new vampires or is this just part of the normal cycle of things. The first thing that attracted me to this book was the title. I was intrigued by the imagery that it conjured up for me; a forest of zombies reaching out with hands and teeth. This is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel where the majority of the human race are mindless cannibalistic zombies. The human race is confined to fenced villages. Mary lives in such a village which has been so isolated from any other humans that they believe that they are the only humans alive. Life involves keeping away from fences which are crowded by zombies trying to get in. The fences are maintained by the Guardians and all boys are trained up into this profession. The village is ruled by the Sisterhood who control all areas of village life such as schooling, marriage, childbirth, and death. Mary has lost her father to the undead and more recently her mother. She is becoming suspicious of the religious Sisterhood who try to rule her life and don't have answers to her questions about the past and the outside. When zombies breech her village Mary and a few others flee into a fenced corridor. No one knows were it will lead nor what dangers it holds. All that keeps Mary going is the stories passed down by her mother and her mothers mother and generations before of the ocean and a life free of the undead.
This is a good zombie read full of the tension that zombies, who are stronger than humans and relentless in their need to human flesh, bring to a story line. I was riveted by the intrigue of the Sisterhood and the way that tradition had been built on misunderstanding and lies to a build a religious order that most people never question. Mary's questioning mirrors teenagers today that are always questioning boundaries and norms that others don't think to question. Mary has a hope, unlike rest of the survivors, which gives her a will to survive and beat the odds stacked against her.
Ryan also adds a bit of teen romance to balance the desperation of the story and to round it off.
8/10