Book Review: Pines

Pines

by Blake Crouch
My rating: 5 of 5 hearts

Synopsis:

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.

Review:

I received this book through the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This fell into the category of books I couldn’t put down. I gobbled it up in one day; and it was worth every minute. I never stopped to think how eerie it would be to exist in a Norman Rockwell painting. In the opening chapter of the book we meet our main character as he struggles to make sense of the seemly idyllic town, Wayward Pines, which he has been thrust into. As an added twist, he also seems to be suffering from a serious bout of amnesia. Through various interactions with the citizens, he realizes that something strange is going on. From that point on, the entire ride is surreal

The book was very well written and edited. I did find that there were quite a few fragmented sentences, but I couldn’t tell if that was a trait of the author’s writing style or if it was his interpretation of the main character’s thought pattern. The plot was super engaging and had me held in suspense for the entirety of the book. There were moments where I was certain that I knew what would happen next, however, more than once my hunches proved to be wrong.

I did find the time shifts to be disorienting. Just when I thought I had a grasp of the story they shift back to a moment that I thought was resent but later realized was actually the past. Granted by the end, I’m only certain that a great amount of time has passed and that the characters were stuck in a loop. Even then, I still couldn’t say for certain the order in which events happened.

This is the first book by Blake Crouch that I’ve read, but certainly not the last. I would recommend this book to all fans of this genre; the imagery may be too much gore for the average reader. I received this book through the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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