A review by vexatiousbird
Pines by Blake Crouch

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The good: It’s exciting. I was really curious to see where it all led. It’s fast paced and has plenty of twists. The concept was interesting.

The bad: There is not a single interesting character to be found here - all flat plot devices with no depth. The protagonist is not likable but he’s not an antihero, he’s just entitled and oblivious, eg., getting furious at the front desk for not giving him a hotel room when he has no way to pay for it. There are a lot of cheap tricks to keep the excitement going, and a lot of it doesn’t even make sense in the broader plot. There is some excessive violence which seems unnecessary/nonsensical when we ultimately see the full picture. Honestly a lot of things make less sense after the big reveal, not more sense.
The “good guys” can’t think of any way to prevent people from leaving town and force them to buy into paradise other than to enlist the entire town to catch them and literally torture them to death in a macabre carnival atmosphere so other people are too scared to try? When their ultimate goal is preserving life? What?


I dropped another of this author’s books partway through, and I thought it was just that specific plot and those characters, but it’s clear now that the problem is the author. I won’t be reading anything more by him, and now that the big mystery in this book is solved, I have no interest in continuing the series either. 
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