Mary lives in a troubled village, where in the middle of trying to survive attacks by the Unconsecrated, it is assumed that she and the rest of her village are the last non-Unconsecrated people in the world. The only thing keeping the Unconsecrated from entering the village, and killing and turning all of the villagers into more Unconsecrated, is an old fence in constant need of repair. In efforts to keep their village population from dieing out, as soon as people are old enough, they are married so they can have children to continue the future of their village.
I'll get straight to my opinion - although Carrie Ryan is a talented writer, I did not like this book. That may partially be in result of my being negatively intoxicated by society's phase of Zombie Apocalypse loving - I am sick and tired of zombies. I actually want to curl up in a corner and repeatedly say precisely that, although it wouldn't make much of a difference: 'I am sick and tired of zombies'. Anyways, my dislike for the book may be somewhat accounted for by that, but I have another reason to not like the book (no matter how great the title is) as well: it was extremely repetitive. I'll show you a few examples: the village Mary lives in is very religious (if I were to say a religion it is close to, I would probably say Catholicism, since there is a Sisterhood in the same sense as Catholics), and believes in God quite a bit, so much that they put passages of Scripture on the entrances to houses to always remind the villagers of God (which is pretty cool, if you ask me). When Mary's mother becomes Unconsecrated, she says that she stops believing in God, and repeatedly she wonders to herself if the reason different things are happening is because she doesn't believe in God anymore. She repeatedly says things like "I wonder if it is because I don't believe in God" and "Now that I don't believe in God, fill in the blank...", and she repeatedly mentions other things in this manner as well, such as her relationship with Travis and her relationship with Travis' brother, and it got to the point where it was unnecessary.
As I stated earlier, I somehow did not realize that the book was a zombie book until I was about a third to a half of the way finished it, and by this time, I needed to know what happened to the characters - perhaps this is the only reason I held on, that, and I needed a book that I could review for this weeks post that you are currently reading. I apologize if it is extremely negative (I feel so horrible about it, to be honest, but what else am I to say to elaborate on the fact that I did not really enjoy the book?). ← Is that proper punctuation, who knows, but I do care!
So, for clarification, since I always feel like I have left my readers in a mucky state of uncertainty about my opinion regarding the book - the writing style was good, aside from the repetitiveness that appeared every once in a while, and if you are a fan of zombies and love triangle-like situations, then I might recommend the book to you, with warnings saying that I did not particularly enjoy it, since those kinds of books aren't typically my style for reading.
Back to my earlier frustration about zombies seeming to take over everyone's thoughts for a while, is there anyone else who shares my frustration over it? I mean, I enjoy the occasional zombie reference, and I will admit that sometimes the 'zombie limp' can be fun to do, but does anyone share with me my opinion that society has taken this whole zombie thing a tad overboard? Personally, I think I would like to abandon ship for the most part on this zombie fad. (*crosses fingers in hopes that it is, indeed, just a fad*) Please let me know your thoughts!
In the meantime,
Stay Addicted!
-Jason