I’ll freely admit I haven’t jumped on the latest book bandwagon. You know the series I’m talking about… Dark covers, a dark and brooding beautiful guy with fangs and the muy bella girl he loves and can’t live without. It just isn’t my swoony cup of tea, much to the chagrin of many of my fellow female department members. Yet, I recently stepped back into their good graces with my last Young Adult read. It’s a foray into the Children’s group but it deserves a mention on our end as well since it is great for adults, too.
Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth introduces readers to Mary, a heroine who is as firmly planted in her reality as she is in her dreams. She longs to escape the confines of her village, one that for as long as she remembers has been fenced in, cut off from the rest of the world…if there still is one. On the other side lies the Forest of Hands and Teeth, the Unconsecrated, a zombie-like people who are as undead as vampires but who somehow haunted me more with their hollowed-out faces and continuous crashing against the fences looking for prey. Despite Mary’s obligations to her family, her people and her own survival she longs for something bigger. She knows she must marry to keep the bloodlines going but she dreams of escaping to the beach, a faraway entity she has only heard of in her mother’s stories. Think The Village meets The Handmaid’s Tale with just a smidge of Twilight (the undead factor) and you get a sense of this book. Since The Handmaid’s Tale is one of my favorites, I was anxious to see how I’d like this one. Luckily, it didn’t disappoint. I found Mary to be a well developed heroine struggling with the adult in a very young adult mindframe. The book wonderfully sets the reader up for the sequel which has a great name, The Dead-Tossed Waves (scheduled to be published in April 2010). This could just be the next great series. I happily jump aboard.
This book will be available on 3/10. Check out the trailer below. It’s great! For other great YA books for adults also check out Jen’s previous post.
[youtube ou1s3t6q2Q4]-Marie