Posted by I picked this one up because I’ve really enjoyed his other books and I was looking for a quick engaging read which seems to be his style. Unfortunately, I DNFd this one for a few reasons.
This is about an FBI agent who has gone looking for two other agents who have disappeared… and ends up in a mystery of his own. It’s reported that he’s also missing, and his wife has buried sentimental items in lieu of a body, with everyone believing he is dead. He’s actually in a place called Wayward Pines, and he’s been told he’s been in a bad car accident, and that his memory will hopefully improve with time.
As the days move on he starts to get more and more paranoid about this town he’s found himself in. He’s been unable to reach his family or speak to anyone outside of Wayward Pines, and like many other horror/fantasy books, it seems escaping this town is near impossible. Things get stranger when he finds someone he knows who lives there, but they are aged up about 30 years. They tell him that people are watching and listening, and that by speaking to them they are in grave danger and shoos him off their property. Left even more confused he tries to escape the town but he can’t find a way out.
So… the thing about this book is that I’ve seen the trope of amnesia done many times… I’ve seen the “can’t escape this weird town” trope many times… so in order for me to fall back into this trope I would have needed some kind of hook or new angle, or great characters that I wanted to read more about. I didn’t much like the main character, and his wife who we follow on the “outside” of wayward pines is just kind of wishy washy and she’s not featured much. She’s a side character and felt very flat to me. Maybe this would have changed if I kept going, but after setting the book down at work I found myself not wanting to return to it later on, and so I just decided not to.
I won’t be rating this one, but if this sounds interesting to you there was nothing wrong with the book itself, it just felt like I’d seen it all before.