Review- The Dark and Hollow Places

Title: The Dark and Hollow Places
Author: Carrie Ryan
Series: The Forest of Hands and Teeth #3
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

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?

My take: 

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is the first zombie book that I ever read and I loved it.  After I finished it, I couldn't wait to find out more about the Sisterhood and how Mary was going to make it on her own.  I loved whole vibe I got from the book, almost like that movie The Village.  I wanted to know more about the fast one, the girl that the Sisterhood turned into a zombie and all about the secrets the Sisterhood had.  But when you read the second book, it starts sixteen years in the future with Mary's daughter.  I'm usually not a big fan of series that follow a different character every book, but I knew I had to finish this series because I wanted to know what was going to happen.

This trilogy is still really good even though all the questions I had after the first book went unanswered.  The Dark and Hollow Places is more graphic and gruesome that the first two.  We also see the depravity of mankind and the evil that some people will become just to survive.  But the four teenagers show that there is hope in a dying world.

I love the way the relationship between Cather and Annah developed.  They are two very broken people who think that they can never be loved by anyone.  Cather has the virus alive inside of him and Annah has extensive scarring on the left side of her body.  These two flaws are what they hate about themselves but make them unique to each other.  Throughout the book, they're both trying to tell the other one not to worry about the flaw because they love it but they're having a hard time loving themselves.  

Overall, I really enjoyed the ending of a great trilogy that I've come to love.  The ending is so open that it allows the reader to fill in the blank.