The Breach: Patrick Lee

Sometimes when I’m at a loss for what to read next, I go to this site. You can enter the ISBN number of a book you enjoy and it comes up with recommended reading.

In one of my searches, I came across this one, checked out the reviews and decided to give it a go even though the description seemed a bit, “bleh”.

Well I TOTALLY enjoyed this book! I really recommend it and give it 5 stars. It kept me on my toes the entire time and I really got into it. It has just enough scifi to keep me interested, but not going over the top.

It’s also one of those books that both men and women would get into.

Anyways, great book!

Amazon Summary:
Lee’s debut thriller pits ex-con ex-cop Travis Chase against increasingly dire odds as the action ratchets up like levels in a complex video game. Fresh out of prison, Travis sets out on a solo Alaskan trek, wanting nothing more than quiet time for introspection. Then he encounters a downed plane containing the dead bodies of the United States’s first lady and several others, plus hints about a mysterious missing item. Armed with superior firepower and the instincts and savvy of a good cop, Travis tracks down the murderers, who are torturing hostage Paige Campbell to get her father, Peter, to reveal another clue. Travis manages to rescue Paige just as Peter confesses the information and is killed. His last words send Paige and Travis into a dangerous world of secrets and conspiracies, where they slowly learn about the eponymous Breach and meet progressively more menacing foes. It’s all here: brilliantly devious enemies; nifty, innovative gadgets and weaponry; hang-on-to-your-hat action; and razor-sharp plot twists aplenty.

  • Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Harper; X edition (December 29, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 9780061584459

Hare Moon: Carrie Ryan

This is a novella and is sort of a prequel to the Forest of Hands and Teeth where we get to learn why Sister Tabitha is such a punk.

Well she has reason to be!

The only bad thing about this book was that it was a novella and therefore super short. I really wanted to keep reading.

Totally recommend this, but AFTER you read the series.

5 stars.

Amazon Summary:
Tabitha can’t shake the feeling that something exists beyond the fences of her village. And when she sneaks out, past the gates and down the path into the Forest of Hands and Teeth, she meets a boy who teaches her heart things she never knew. But love in a world surrounded by so much death doesn’t come without its sacrifices, and Tabitha gradually realizes just how much she’ll have to give up to live among the Unconsecrated.

Currently, the book is only in digital format.

The Dark and Hollow Places: Carrie Ryan

This is the much anticipated third installment in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series that I adored.

Seriously, I loved this series and felt it had just the right mixture of zombie and humanity to keep me interested.

Anyways, I don’t have any complaints and I felt it wrapped the series up nicely. It was my top book of 2010 for sure.

I recommend it!

Amazon Summary:
There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister’s face when she and Elias left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the horde as they found their way to 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 him to come home ever since. Without him, her life doesn’t feel much different from that of the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Then she meets Catcher and everything feels alive again.

Except, Catcher has his own secrets — dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah’s 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 drenched in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return’s destruction?

  • Hardcover: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (March 22, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 9780385738590

The Passage

So this book was referred to me by Penny when I wrote the tweet:

And she did not disappoint! First off, this book took me several days to finish because it has almost 800 pages. LOVE it!
It’s this sort of end of the world because of a nasty virus that makes people sort of like vampire/zombie crazy people. But it spans like over 100 years and has such an in depth story. I really enjoyed it and totally recommend it to people who like this type of genre. It also is the first of a trilogy, so I’m really looking forward to the rest of them.

4 stars and yes, recommend it.

Amazon Summary:
Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a post-apocalyptic America overrun by the gruesome reality behind the wish-fulfillment fantasies. When a secret project to create a super-soldier backfires, a virus leads to a plague of vampiric revenants that wipes out most of the population. One of the few bands of survivors is the Colony, a FEMA-established island of safety bunkered behind massive banks of lights that repel the virals, or dracs—but a small group realizes that the aging technological defenses will soon fail. When members of the Colony find a young girl, Amy, living outside their enclave, they realize that Amy shares the virals’ agelessness, but not the virals’ mindless hunger, and they embark on a search to find answers to her condition. PEN/Hemingway Award–winner Cronin (The Summer Guest) uses a number of tropes that may be overly familiar to genre fans, but he manages to engage the reader with a sweeping epic style. The first of a proposed trilogy, it’s already under development by director Ripley Scott and the subject of much publicity buzz

  • Hardcover: 784 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Edition, First Printing edition (June 8, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345504968

Dead Tossed Waves: Carrie Ryan

This is a the 2nd book to The Forest of Hands and Teeth which is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time!
It doesn’t so much pick up where the last one left off, so I wouldn’t call it a sequal, it just sort of progresses the stories a few decades later.
But just like Forest of Hands and Teeth, it grips you and sucks you in. You connect with the characters and the love and the fear and the tragedy on such a deep level.
I TOTALLY recommend this book with 5 stars! Like seriously, go out and read both of them… like now. This instant!

Summary:
Gabry has grown up safely in the city of Vista. She lives in a lighthouse with her mother, Mary, the daring heroine of The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009), whose job it is to kill Mudo—zombies—as they wash ashore. Then one night, Cira, Gabry’s best friend, and Catcher, Cira’s brother, convince her to sneak outside Vista’s walls. With the attack of one Breaker—a fast zombie—everything changes: a friend is killed, Catcher is infected, and Cira is imprisoned and destined for the Recruiters, the army that protects the loose federation of cities left after the Return. Feeling both guilty for having escaped punishment and self-destructive after the revelation that Mary in fact adopted her, Gabry pushes herself to cross the city’s Barrier again. Some pieces of the narrative are well constructed: the constant, looming threat of the Mudo, Gabry’s quiet determination and daring in the face of fear, and villainous soldier Daniel’s palpably frightening power-grabbing sexual advances. Other details are less believable, like Mary’s suddenly abandoning her daughter and her duties to seek her past in the Forest. Though flawed, this volume has enough action, romance, and depth of character to satisfy, and the cliff-hanger ending will leave fans hungry for the third book.

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (March 9, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385736843