I cruise around on Amazon quite a bit looking for new books and new authors.  I read 3-4 books at a time so I am always kind of on the lookout.  I like to spend time looking in the pages of the genres that I like.

While searching through horror and thrillers, I kept coming across an author named Blake Crouch.  Particularly, I kept seeing his series Wayward Pines.  Finally, I decided to check them out.

And I’m real glad that I did.

It’s hard to talk about the whole series too much without giving away the end of the first book, so this may be brief and I’ll be real careful.

The story follows Ethan Burke, a secret service agent who goes to a town called Wayward Pines, ID to search for his missing former partner.  When he gets there, he realizes that something isn’t right.  The people in the town are very strange.  He can’t get in touch with his wife.  And he can’t leave.  

Once the story gets going, it keeps you on the edge of your seat.  I couldn’t put it down.  I pretty much put the other books aside that I was reading and finished these in about 2-3 weeks.

I read and listened to the books using Amazon Whispersync which is a really cool feature.  

From a writing standpoint, I really like Blake Crouch.  One of the things I like that he does is that he uses sentence fragments in a very smart way to show you what characters are doing.  For example, instead of saying something like:  “She went to the kitchen, made herself some scrambled eggs, then sat down for a glass of wine.”,  He would write it like: “She went to the kitchen.  Made some eggs.  Enjoyed a glass of wine.”  I really like this and have started using it in my writing some.  

One thing I don’t like, and I have noticed it while reading one of his other books, is that his dialogue can be kind of weak.  His story telling is so good and flows so well, but sometimes I think the dialogue can be a little unrealistic.  In specific with female characters.  One particular problem I had was that I thought Teresa, Ethan’s wife in the books, came off very weak in the last book.  She came off like a scared teenager when I feel like a mother would be a little stronger in the situations she was in.  I thought that he also made his son come off a little too ignorant.  In Crouch’s defense, I did listen almost exclusively to the last book and I may have had more of an issue with how the narrator portrayed the two characters.  But again, I have noticed this in other works.

That being said, the series is incredible.  I would highly recommend it for anyone who loves heavily character driven horror, suspense thrillers.  The end of the first book will throw you for a loop and you’ll want to jump right to the second book.

Oh, and if you read the book before the first of the year, you can be ahead of the curve once the mini series based on the book comes out!  See the trailer below.  It has a very good cast.