Wayward by Blake Crouch
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
A fate worse than death awaits the townsfolk of Wayward Pines. Prison could be considered a picnic. In prison, there are rules, laws, restrictions, and armed guards, who in theory at least, help keep the peace. Wayward Pines has no such laws and restrictions. Sure, there’s a guidebook handed to every new resident, all inhabitants have been implanted with microchips for security reasons, an electrified fence and razor wire help solidify the perimeter, and snipers keep occupants between the crosshairs…and hell is an inferno that is run by Lucifer for the greater good of the underworld.
If you want to totally and completely destroy a man’s soul without actually taking his life—consider this a more interesting social experiment than prison—just put him in the midst of a makeshift town, with other ne’er-do-wells just like him, put the meanest, nastiest, cruelest motherfucker you can find in charge, and then surround the boundary with a sea of mean and nasty motherfuckers, secure the perimeter with an electrified and razor wire fence, and then you’ll have hell on earth. Oh, and you may want to bring a mortician by periodically to collect the bodies. Otherwise, you can let it all play out on the TV monitors from the comfort of your own home. Now that, my friends, is reality television.
Plenty of normal characters, and even a psychopath or two, grazed these pages. A few of the more prominent ones were Kate Ballinger, Theresa Burke, Pam (no last name), David Pilcher, and of course, Ethan Burke, who has a bit of the tragic hero in his blood. But tragedy kept me flipping pages as trees and scrub brush and an abby or two went up in flames. I was a rubbernecker on this side of the road, thankful that I could keep right on driving, because there was no way in hell I planned to stop for this crazy train.
While there’s certainly a mystery here, with a dead body that appears fairly early on, the real pleasure here, sadistic as it may be, is the horror that surrounds this town, and the horrors contained within. Catastrophe meet WAYWARD, and neither, I’m sure, will benefit from the introduction. As my eyes opened wide, the continued hallucinations nearly took my breath away. And if I hadn’t already been to Boise and realized it’s actually a decent place, I’d have probably wiped Idaho from my Christmas list.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.