A review by aconitecafe
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

medium-paced

3.0

 I really wanted to love this book, the premise sounds so fantastic, it just wasn't executed as well as I'd hoped.

The book starts off slow, introducing you to the world, how it works mechanics wise, and the main character. As we get deeper into the story, we are led to feel for the guy, and his humble life as an upper class person. As the cracks in their well oiled society begin to show the book starts to pick up in pace.

But around the 60% mark, when the big plot twist happens, the author leans on telling to catch the reader up, disguised as catching the main character up and it really pulled me out of the story. I had a hard time getting back into it for the rest of the book, beside the fact that that type of plot twist is rarely done satisfactory. The ending was only so so for me, but mostly because the jig was up, so there was no point in what was happening to the characters for me. The characters that did matter, didn't get the page time they deserved.

If you want the spoiler version,
as soon as we knew that it was all a dream land, I no longer cared what happened in the dream land, I wanted to know more about the settlers, and how they were coming to terms with what happened in the dream land. But instead the book ends in yet another dream land, making fake memories, it was morbid and creepy, and kind of a cop out ending. He didn't sacrifice himself to teach people a lesson. He was just too scared to join the settlers and take responsibility so he opted for a fake reality. Big disappointment. He should have stayed and built the life they all deserved with Thea.
 

Overall, if you really enjoyed the show LOST or the movie Inception, you'll probably enjoy this book. I'm not saying I disliked it. It was an interesting take on society, and had some thought provoking points about the human race.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this copy for me to read.