By Carrie Ryan
Hardcover, 374 pages
Published March 22nd 2011 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers
ISBN 0385738595 (ISBN13: 9780385738590)


Blurb

There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister’s face before Annah left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the Horde as they swarmed the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah would like to forget the morning Elias left her for the Recruiters. Annah’s world stopped that day, and she’s been waiting for Elias to come home ever since. Somehow, without him, her life doesn’t feel much different than the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Until she meets Catcher, and everything feels alive again. But Catcher has his own secrets. Dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah has longed to forget, and to a future too deadly to consider. And now it’s up to Annah: can she continue to live in a world covered in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return’s destruction?

The Good

  1. The zombies.  I love zombie books, and the zombies don’t disappoint in the final installment of The Forest of Hands and Teeth series. I just wish there had been more focus on the world and the zombies instead of the instalove and self-pity.


The Bad

  1. The weak heroine…again.  Reading this book immediately after reading the second book, The Dead-Tossed Waves, I felt like the narrator was a different person…with exactly the same insecurities and problems as the narrator from The Dead-Tossed Waves. Only possibly whinier. Or I just have had enough of the pissing and moaning and simply couldn’t take it anymore. Either way, the self-pity was so annoying in this one I wanted to throw my Kindle across the room and beat it with a baseball bat.

  2. The romance…again.  As with the weak heroine, the romance felt identical to the romance set up in the second book. The difference being that the pissing and moaning mentioned earlier made this otherwise mildly tolerable aspect of the book annoying as well. I am tired of hearing how he doesn’t want you, how you’re so confused, how your love is this big enormous thing that consumes you. I want to slap you, Annah. I want to slap you and bring you back to reality for a second. He clearly has a thing for you—suck it up and tell to him how you feel already!


Favorite Quote

"We’re all dying," I whisper. "Whether the Unconsecrated are in this world or not—we’ll still be dying."


Overall Rating

This book felt way too similar to the second book due to the instalove and self-pity hijacking the entire book. The plot, as with the other books in the series, has great potential. Unfortunately, that potential is not met.