The Dead-Tossed Waves

The Dead Tossed Waves
by Carrie Ryan
Published Date: March 9th 2010
by Delecorte Books for Young Readers
3 stars

What Goodreads has to say: Gabry lives a quiet life. As safe a life as is possible in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean, in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. She’s content on her side of the Barrier, happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast while she watches from the top of her lighthouse. But there are threats the Barrier cannot hold back. Threats like the secrets Gabry’s mother thought she left behind when she escaped from the Sisterhood and the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Like the cult of religious zealots who worship the dead. Like the stranger from the forest who seems to know Gabry. And suddenly, everything is changing. One reckless moment, and half of Gabry’s generation is dead, the other half imprisoned. Now Gabry only knows one thing: she must face the forest of her mother’s past in order to save herself and the one she loves.

My Review: After finishing the first book in the forest of hands and teeth series I was eager to start the next. The Dead-Tossed Waves starts off a few years after the ending of the first book. We are introduced to a new cast of characters, the main one being Gabrielle, Mary's daughter. I was excited by the introduction of new characters. I felt the author did a fine job of interweaving the new characters with the story told in the first book. She writes this story in a way that allows you to be drawn into the new story without completely forgetting the one that came before it. My favorite thing about this series so far is actually the zombies. I feel that frequently when reading books that include zombies I am unable to fully picture a zombie as described in the story as one that would truly frighten me. I have no problem imagining the ones described by the author in this book. The author leaves some mystery to the zombies while still providing enough information for the reader to picture a perfectly horrifying zombie. She writes about them in a way that makes it hard to just write them off as soulless dead people. The biggest disappointment of the book for me was that I felt it mirrored the first book to closely for my liking. Again the main character is pulled between two different boys, again the main character has a falling out with her best friend, and again a good portion of the story revolves around the characters finding their way through the forest. At parts the book was predictable however overall the author had enough surprises and twist in the book to keep me reading. I am hoping the next book will be a fresh story that does not involve a love triangle or the characters making their way back through the forest. Overall I am liking this series and I cant wait to move on to the 3rd book.

About the author: Carrie Ryan was born and raised in Greenville, SC and is a graduate of Williams College and Duke University School of Law. A former litigator, she now pursues her true passion and writes full time. Although Ryan's 2009 novel, THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH, is set in a world roamed by the living dead, before meeting her fiance JP she was actually a self-proclaimed "scaredy-cat" who avoided horror movies. JP was the one who convinced her to go to her first zombie movie and opened a whole new world up to her, which is why she dedicated her first book to him. The second novel in The Forest of Hands and Teeth Series, THE DEAD-TOSSED WAVES, came out in 2010 and the final in the trilogy, THE DARK AND HOLLOW PLACES, will be out March 22, 2011. She lives in Charlotte, NC with two fat cats and one large puppy.