Review by Amanda! Pines by Blake Crouch. 3 Tea Cups!

Pines (Wayward Pines #1)

By: Blake Crouch

Genre: Thriller/Sci-Fi

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels…off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

Review by Amanda

3 Tea Cups

Have you ever read a novel where you thought it was going one way and then all of a sudden it does a 180? And that sudden flip wasn't a good thing. That was my overall impression of Pines. I really enjoyed the beginning, but all of a sudden it got weird. I started questioning if I had missed some chapters and that's never good. 

Pines starts off with Secret service agent Ethan Burke arriving to a tiny town called Wayward Pines. He knows he was heading to the town to find 2 missing agents, but he doesn't recall how he got there after he got in an accident. When he begins to meet the people of the town and investigating, something doesn't feel right. 

For those of you who watched the hit TV show Lost, Pines very much reminded of Lost. You had a plane crash and people were stranded on the island, however the island isn't what it appears to be. You have no idea who you can trust and people end up not being who you thought they were. 

The second half of Pines took a turn towards the Sci-fi/dystopian theme and I didn't like it at all. The actions that the characters made didn't make sense and the plot became unbelievable. There was way too much happening in the second half of the book and I got lost multiple times. 

I really liked the mystery/thriller aspect of Pines. The readers didn't know if the people of Wayward Pines could be trusted, and at times I didn't know if I could trust the narrator, Ethan. I wanted to figure out the mystery behind Wayward Pines and why the town's people were acting so strange. Unfortunately the ending wasn't what I thought it would be and I didn't feel satisfied. 

I would recommend this novel to those readers who are into Sci-fi/dystopian genre, however this may not be the read for mystery/thriller fans. Pines is the first novel of the Wayward Pines trilogy, I probably won't be continuing with the series unless I hear really good reviews for the next 2 novels. 

Add on: Goodreads

Buy Links:

Amazon: http://amazon/Pines

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pines