Reader reviewed by Elise

This is a book about the zombie apocalypse--and, no, I'm not joking.
The Unconsecrated are infected future citizens of the world and they will come eat you if you don't watch out! The Forest of Hands and Teeth,
however, is not a lame scream-filled horror (quite the contrary, in
fact). It is a beautifully constructed, meaningful, speculative book
with a realistic, tortured voice that the reader cannot avoid wanting
to die for. Mary is just so real. Her desires and needs and decisions aren't fanciful or outlandish and really let us connect
with her on such a personal level that it's frightening. The amazing
and horrific setting is both enthralling and disturbing, from the
blatant declaration that marriage has nothing to do with love to the
vivid descriptions of individual undead. Zombies aside, however, this
book is also a love story that will rip you to the core with the
all-too-real emotions and complications that come along with falling in
love in a world like Mary's involving a heartrending love-square full
of pain, sacrifice, and duty that is just all wrong
but cannot be put right. But above all, this story leaves the reader
with one question, waiting desperately to be answered with Ryan's next
novel: How exactly will the world survive the siege of the
Unconsecrated?