This is really hard to describe – not in a bad way, just in a “wow, I’d really have to think before I handsold this because I wouldn’t want to get it wrong” way. It’s blurbed by Melissa Marr, and those girls are SORT of who it’s for. Sort of. I just described this to another friend as what would happen if Robin McKinley wrote a historical novel featuring zombies. Once again, I feel like publishers are trying to make zombies the next big thing and I don’t think they’re going to be no matter how hard the publishers try. That being said, I’ve just read two really good books with zombies in them, each completely different from the other. So who knows? Maybe zombies will be a thing.

Anyway. This book. It’s about a girl named Mary who lives in a village surrounded by what they call The Forest of Hands and Teeth, where the Unconsecrated live. (The Unconsecrated, you find out later, are zombies.) The fence is the only thing that keeps them out, and the Guardians patrol the fence to make sure no one on the inside gets close enough to be bitten (and infected, and turned). When no one offers to marry Mary, she ends up in the Sisterhood, where she begins to learn the painful truth about the origins of the village and what is on the other side of the fence. When the village is overrun by the Unconsecrated, she must choose between helping to protect those she loves and discovering the full truth outside of the Forest.

This started out a little slow for me because it was feeling like a very religious book, but I quickly figured out it was more of a zombie fairy tale. I thought the juxtaposition of religion, romance, horror and history would be impossible to pull off but Ryan does it and does it well. Her writing’s got a really lovely tone to it. In the end I really enjoyed this.

Publisher: Random House

Pub Date: March 2009