I’m a big fan of horror fiction. It’s a guilty pleasure dating back to when I was old enough to read. It’s worse than scary movies because with a movie you can cover your eyes until the bad parts are past. But with novels — well, it’s a bit difficult to read with your eyes closed. If you intend to get through it you just have to bite down and go for it. It’s a test of wills, really.

I just finished reading “The Forest of Hands and Teeth” by Carrie Ryan. It’s billed as “young adult fiction” and I suppose it is. It’s not like Twilight or anything, so at least I have that going for me. Mostly it was the zombies that got me. I am SUCH a sucker for a zombie. It could have been a child’s pop up book and so long as it has a zombie in it, I’m there, all like, “Yay! lookit the zombie popping out of the book!” clapping my hands, perhaps drooling a little. Who knows what’s wrong with me? Who can say?

The book follows Mary, a young girl in a remote village walled in on all sides by high, chain link fences. It’s many, many years after the zombie apocalypse and the children growing up in this sanctuary know nothing of a life without the “unconsecrated” shambling along the fence line, hungering for flesh. How’s that for cerebral reading? War and Peace it ain’t, I know. I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want to give anything away, but also because you probably don’t care. If you’re likely to read something like this you don’t want to know too many plot details and if you’re not? Then you definitely don’t want to know.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about the story. I want to talk about The Book and its author. Carrie Ryan is a good writer, I’ll give her that. She beats the pants off of Stephanie “Nutjob” Meyer, but I realize that’s not saying much. And I realize it’s fiction for young adults and I’m far from young, so I’ve got to cut her some slack there as well. I’m not her target audience, I just lust for anything zombie-related I can sink my teeth into. Pardon the pun. But she could have done better.

It was a compelling story that had my heart racing in more than one place in the book. I was so freaked out and scared a couple times I had to set the book down and walk away for a minute. Remind myself it’s not real. I was freaking out when I had to go out on the front porch in the dark. By myself. Where there might be zombies. Holy hell, I get way too into these things for how much they affect me.

There was a little too much of the stupid side story though. This whole love triangle thing that I guess every author of young adult fiction feels compelled to inflict on their storyline. It got a little old, the constant battle between the two brothers who both have it bad for our heroine. And she pissed me off. She vacillated between the boys, unable to make up her mind about which she really loved. She was a strong, liberated, independent super girl one minute and a simpering, whiny brat the next. She got on my nerves and if I had to survive a zombie outbreak with her…well, let’s just say only one of us would make it. There was way too much pining away with moonbeams in her eyes for my taste, but I will allow that, again, it wasn’t geared toward me as an audience and just because I’m old and crotchety, doesn’t mean a 17 year old girl wouldn’t read it and just be all like [swoon] . So I don’t think she should lose points for that, is all I’m sayin’.

What really bothered me about the book is that it had so much potential. I’m reading this thing, totally engrossed in it, and I’m thinking this would make a great movie. It would even make a good television series. All the elements are there. It wasn’t until the end that it fell apart. It jumped the shark. It nuked the fridge.

When I read I get invested in the book. I give it my time, my attention. Those are two precious commodities around here so I don’t just give them away willy nilly. And when I do find something to give them to, I get mad when the end result is less than I had hoped for. I resent it. Yeah, I guess I take it a bit personally.

The book didn’t really end. Maybe she left it this way because she’s hoping for a Meyeresque 3 book deal with movie rights to follow. If so, shame on her. It’s B.S. to bait like that for your own selfish desires. What about MY selfish desires? I had more unanswered questions by the last page than I had one chapter in. She just could have done so much more. What caused the outbreak? How did all these villages come into being? What was the sisterhood hiding? What did they do to Gabriella? Why? What significance does the red vest hold? What happened to the occupants of the abandoned village? Is that where Gabriella came from? What happened to Harry? To Jed? To Jacob and Cassie? Where’s the history? What do the roman numerals signify? Who decided on that system, if it was a system? Was it a system? What purpose did it serve? Where’s Mary’s dad? How did he get outside the fence? What happens next, dammit?

But maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I’ll have to be satisfied with making the ending I would want it to have and leave it at that. I just feel a little cheated. Enough so to be blogging about it, ffs. Stephen King could have done so much with that plot. He would have given me more than enough back story. Plenty of history. He wouldn’t have left me just hanging there. I wonder if he’s read it and if so I wonder what he thinks. I imagine he would be just as disappointed with it as I was. The story telling was so good! It had so much potential! All the elements were there and then, well I guess it just seems like she got tired of writing it and decided to just end it where she was. Or perhaps because it was fiction aimed at young adults she had to keep it to a certain length. I don’t know. I think that’s selling young people short, personally. They are just as curious, if not more so, than us old fogies.

It’s too bad too because when I was reading it I was raving to the boys about how good it was. I excitedly stood over them and recounted some particularly creepy passages and they seemed to be all about it. I told them they could borrow it when I was done, but now, well now I don’t think I could recommend they waste their time, based on the ending. Or lack of one.

I want those two days back, dammit.