"The Dead Tossed Waves" by Carrie Ryan

407 pages

Gabry is all about playing it safe--as safe as she can growing up in a town trapped between a forest and the ocean in a world teeming with the dead, who constantly hunger for those still living. Then, in one fateful night, her infatuation with a friend's brother, Catcher, causes her to join a group of kids on the other side of the Barrier, and everything changes forever. Some of the kids are killed and the rest of them are imprisoned for crossing the forbidden barrier. Only Gabry and Catcher got away--but she doesn't know where Catcher escaped to. On top of that, she discovers an unexpected secret about her mother's past that changes everything she knew about her life, and a mysterious boy from the Dark City appears and seems to know more than he lets on. Gabry realizes that she is going to have to get WAY out of her comfort zone by going deep into the Forest of Hands and Teeth to confront her family's past in order to save everyone that she loves.

I was mostly disappointed with this sequel to "The Forest of Hands and Teeth." That first book wasn't my favorite zombie novel by any stretch of the imagination, but it did hold my interest and left me curious about what happened in the rest of the series. I enjoyed the basic plot of "Dead Tossed Waves," and I liked the way that it brought the lives of the new characters together with the ones from "The Forest of Hands and Teeth." There are several unexpected plot twists that interested me. However, I just didn't like Gabry's narration very much. She gets very overdramatic about the romance stuff, which gets on my nerves. She also uses corny metaphors that had me rolling my eyes a lot. That's really the only major thing that I didn't like about this book, but it kind of ruins it when you don't like the main character. I am definitely going to read the third book in series, though, because I am invested enough that I want to find out what happens. Also, I have hope that the narration will be more my style since the first one (which is narrated by Gabry's mother) didn't seem as bad as "Dead Tossed Waves."