Dark and Hollow Places are Everywhere

That's what The Dark and Hollow Places seems to be saying.  Dark and hollow places in the world and dark and hollow places within ourselves.  Annah, the heroine of this, the third book in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series, sees a lot of those frightening spots, both in the world around her and in herself.  I think that this was the best of the series so far.  Certainly Annah is the most likable of the heroines, in my opinion.
At first I found it a little tricky to remember who everyone was but my dear friend Kelly came to my rescue again and told me that D&HP takes place not too long after Dead Tossed Waves.
Annah is Gabry's twin sister and she is living in The Dark City (formerly New York City) alone, since her crush Elias has left to join the Recruiters.  The Recruiters were once the protectors of the living, keeping the safe from the Unconsecrated or Mudo or Plague Rats- that's what we would call zombies, who have pretty much taken over the world.  Now the Recruiters are rotten, power-hungry dudes who have taken over the ruling body of what is left of the world.
Annah starts to leave the Dark City in search of her childhood home, the Forest, having given up on the hope of Elias returning to her.  As she tries to make her way there she thinks that she spots her twin sister, whom she and Elias left in the Forest when they were little because her twin was unable to go any further.  She has always felt terrible guilt about leaving her twin and now she feels she can't leave her again.  She must go back and find her.
It turns out that her twin, who was once known as Abigail is really Gabry from the second book...the girl who was raised by Mary from Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Gabry is now with Elias, so there's that love-triangle going on and Annah is saved by Catcher, from DTW and things spark between them.  So this is a horror story and love story, like the other two in the series.
Because Annah is so much more likable than Gabry in the second book and Mary in the first, I found myself ripping through this book even faster than the first two, eager to find out if Elias, Catcher, Gabry and Annah escape the cruel Recruiters and the zombies.
This book asks a lot of good questions such as, what would you do if you had only a few days or hours to live, is life worth living, given all the pain involved, is there a difference between "existing" and "living?"
Great, great book for sure!  The best in the series...and the series was pretty awesome before this third addition, so that is saying a lot!  I don't know if there will be another or if this was a trilogy, but I will be reading anything that Carrie Ryan puts out.
And now...I REALLY have to read something happy!  All of this recent dystopian stuff is giving me nightmares, literally!