Review: Pines by Blake Crouch
Sometimes the best reading experiences happen entirely by accident. Pines was not on my immediate TBR at all, but when a colleague mentioned she had started reading it and became so engrossed that she nearly missed her train stop on the way home, my curiosity was piqued. I have had the entire trilogy sitting on my e-reader for ages, waiting for that vague “one day” when I might finally start it. And since there is something especially fun about reading a book alongside someone else so you can discuss it afterwards, I decided to dive right in.
Blake Crouch – Pines (Wayward Pines #1) ★★★★
Genre: Thriller
Why can’t he make contact with his family in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what’s the purpose of the electrified fences encircling the town? Are they keeping the residents in? Or something else out?
Each step toward the truth takes Ethan further from the world he knows, until he must face the horrifying possibility that he may never leave Wayward Pines alive…
I went into Pines knowing virtually nothing about the plot, or even the genre. From the very first chapters I found myself drawn into the strange, ominous atmosphere surrounding the small town of Wayward Pines. Almost immediately it reminded me of the old television series Twin Peaks: a quiet town that appears perfectly normal on the surface, yet where something is clearly very, very wrong. Reading Blake Crouch’s afterword later confirmed that this comparison was not entirely accidental.
The writing is highly effective at creating tension. The paragraphs are often short, fragmented, and urgent, mirroring the chaotic state of Ethan Burke’s thoughts as he struggles to piece together what is happening around him. The result is a novel that reads incredibly quickly. Many chapter endings introduce new questions or deepen the mystery.
Several scenes were genuinely stressful to read. At times the tension became so intense that I had to pause for a moment simply to let my own adrenaline settle. That pacing works remarkably well, stretching the suspense even tighter. The constant sense of confusion and dread places the reader firmly alongside Ethan as he tries to understand the increasingly bizarre reality unfolding around him.
Ethan himself is not the most likeable protagonist. He comes across as something of a typical jock, with a rather sexist outlook on life. One moment that especially stood out is when he praises his wife for staying with him after discovering his affair, while admitting that he would not have been able to forgive her had the roles been reversed. He is also stubborn and often impulsive, but these traits help convey his relentless determination to uncover the truth. No matter how strange or dangerous the situation becomes, he keeps digging, pushing, and questioning. That tenacity ultimately made it difficult not to root for him.
Throughout most of the novel, the reader keeps asking the same question Ethan does: what on earth is going on here? Is there a logical explanation? Is something paranormal happening? Could this be some form of psychological manipulation? The story keeps presenting possible explanations without fully committing to any of them. When the major reveal finally arrives, it was something I genuinely did not see coming.
The twist immediately made me want to go back and reconsider everything that had come before. It prompted me to start piecing together the timeline of events, which in turn raised even more questions about how everything fits together. Rather than neatly resolving the mystery, the reveal opens up an entirely new layer of intrigue.
At the same time, the ending makes it very clear that this is only the beginning of a much larger story. Many questions remain unanswered, and I strongly suspect, or at least I hope, that the next two books will explore the mysteries of Wayward Pines in far greater depth.
Spoilers
Once the central reveal arrives, the story shifts dramatically from mystery thriller to something closer to speculative science fiction. While the twist itself was shocking and memorable, it also raised quite a few questions for me.
One thing that stood out was how strangely homogeneous the society of Wayward Pines appears to be. Almost every woman is described as cute or beautiful and primarily focused on domestic roles, while the population itself seems overwhelmingly white and organised almost exclusively into traditional families. Considering that Pilcher supposedly selected the “best” of humanity to preserve, these choices reveal quite a lot about his personal biases and cast a different light on what remains of human civilisation.
Pilcher himself is a fascinating but deeply disturbing character. His entire project reeks of a god complex: he decides who deserves to survive, who must die, and what kind of society humanity’s future should become. The fact that he claims to be preserving the “last pure humans” while simultaneously executing people whenever they threaten his rules feels profoundly hypocritical.
Another aspect I struggled with was the behaviour of the town’s inhabitants. We see hints that many people are afraid and aware that something is wrong, yet they still participate in public punishments and executions (even the children!) with very little resistance. In fact, these events often turn into something resembling a public celebration. It raises the question of how much of this obedience stems from fear, conditioning, or simple social pressure.
There are also practical questions about how Wayward Pines actually functions. We are told that Pilcher spent decades building and populating the town, yet many details remain unclear. How exactly does the suspension technology work? How do people accept waking up in a completely fabricated reality without asking more questions? Hopefully the sequels will explore these aspects in greater depth.
The evolutionary explanation behind the Abbies also felt somewhat difficult to fully accept. The idea that humanity naturally evolved into such radically different creatures strongly reminded me of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Perhaps the comparison is intentional, but I do wonder whether the later books will expand further on how and why this transformation occurred.
Finally, the timeline itself is fascinating but also somewhat confusing. Ethan believes he arrived in Wayward Pines on 24 September 2012 and that only a few days have passed. Yet the novel gradually reveals that far more time is involved. Once Pilcher explains the truth, we learn that when Ethan wakes up in Wayward Pines, it is not 2012 at all, but more than 1,800 years later.
Trying to piece together the chronology from the scattered clues quickly turns into a puzzle. I found myself attempting to reconstruct it, resulting in a rough timeline that looks something like this:
- 1971 – Pilcher discovers evidence that humanity will eventually evolve (or devolve) into something radically different.
- 1979 – He claims to have perfected the suspension technology that would allow humans to be preserved far into the future.
- 1980s onward – Pilcher begins secretly abducting people and placing them into suspension in order to build a future population. Beverly, for example, arrived on 3 October 1985, yet believes she has only been in Wayward Pines for about a year.
- ~1980s–2030 – Over the course of roughly fifty years, Pilcher kidnaps and suspends around 650 people, gradually assembling the population that will later inhabit Wayward Pines.
- 1990s–early 2000s – Pilcher discovers the town of Wayward Pines and spends roughly twenty-two years transforming it into the controlled community we see in the novel.
- August 2012 – FBI agents Kate Hewson and Bill Evans disappear while investigating Wayward Pines.
- 24 September 2012 – Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines while searching for them. From his perspective, the events of the novel span only five days.
Yet other characters experience time very differently:
- Kate appears to have aged roughly twenty years, despite having disappeared only about a month before Ethan’s arrival.
- Theresa and Ben come to Wayward Pines after Ethan has been missing for roughly fifteen months, yet later reveal they have already spent five years living in the town.
- Beverly believes she has only been there for about a year despite arriving in 1985.
Pilcher ultimately reveals that the world Ethan wakes up in is actually 1,814 years, 5 months, and 11 days later than he believes. If Ethan arrived on 24 September 2012, that would place the real date somewhere around March 3827. Pilcher also admits that Ethan has already been awakened three times before, only to be placed back into suspension after previous attempts to integrate him into the town failed.
I suspect the reader is not meant to fully grasp the timeline yet. And I’m equally sure Pilcher still has some secrets up his sleeve. I suspect the sequels will explore it in far greater detail.
Featured image by Michele Purin on Unsplash
