The Dead and Empty World

A great addition to the Forest of Hands and Teeth world. If you want more tension filled stories give this a read. I promise they are as good as Carrie Ryan's trilogy! We finally are able to see how bits of the world reacted to the Return. Each short story encounters a different era of the Return, and various characters living through it. How they encounter the undead for the first time, how they handle people they know turning into them, etc. We are also able to catch a glimpse of how Sister Tabitha was as a young woman and the actions that befell her to create the stern lying woman we know her for from the trilogy. I enjoyed the Easter Eggs at the back of the book and Ryan's story of how she became interested in zombies, as well as her origins for each short story. I wouldn't hesitate to read more of her work.

The ending just didn't fit with the story. It could have been so much better.... it could have still ended the way it did, but it needed to happen a different way to be believable!

I definitely liked reading more about the Village and the Sisterhood. Tabitha's loyalty and determination were attributes that Ryan's other characters didn't quite possess in the same way, yet she made that apparent in this short story.