What a Dilemma!--The Pines #2: Wayward

The Pines #2:  Wayward by Blake Crouch

Science Fiction/Dystopian Thriller

It isn't often that I give a book 5 stars.  I save those for the books I can't put down; for the books that move me as a human; books that I think everyone should read.  This is definitely one of those books I just couldn't put down.  I inhaled this second installment in The Pines series just like I did the first one.  That is a rarity for me.  Usually the second book disappoints but this one just picked up speed and now I am rushing to buy and read the last one.  But....I don't want to read it because then it's over.  What a dilemma!

This story picks up just where the first left off, so be sure to read them in order.  Ethan Burke finds himself as the unwilling sheriff of a utopia, the last bastion of humankind in a world overrun by aberrations, humans that have warped and changed into monsters over the last two thousand years while he and his fellow Wayward Pines townspeople were sleeping.  Ethan should be happy to be alive but his ethical and moral code has a problem with the beautiful prison where he lives with his family.  He can't leave Wayward Pines, and he increasingly discovers he also can't stay.  What a dilemma! 

I loved everything about this book--the main character Ethan, a fallible man who tries to do his best even when that obviously isn't good enough; the other characters--a couple of love triangles kept it interesting; the evil scientist--why aren't there more stories about evil scientists?!?  I love those villains!; the setting--a dark and disturbing future where science has run amok.  What's not to love about this book?  What a dilemma! 

I can't find a single thing to complain about.  As a reader, that's a nice dilemma to have.