I’m currently stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’ve finished the second book in the Maze Runner series, The Scorch Trials and while I kinda loved it, I also kinda hated it. Let me explain:

When I finished James Dashner’s The Maze Runner last week, I was so excited about the book that I knew I had to finish this series ASAP. The same hour that I finished the book, I had already gone out to Barnes & Noble to pick up the next two books of the series. That night I started reading the second book, Scorch Trials, about Phase Two of the Maze issue. It started out awesome. And when I say awesome, I mean freakin’ awesome. Exactly 37 pages in I was so shocked at what I was reading (because I just never would have expected it) that I had to reread that page to make sure I had understood correctly. So this book started out so cool, and I couldn’t put it down. It was one of those books that when you’re reading it, you’re super into it, and when you’re not reading it, it’s all you can think about.

But about 3/4 of the way through I started to get tired. The main character was passed out or fell asleep like every other page. All of the “exciting” parts were really not that exciting – sort of anticipated, actually. So I was getting a little frustrated with the book, but figured that when I read the first of the series, Maze Runner, I had a hard time getting into it until about 1/4 of the way through. So I thought maybe that was just how the author writes, but it would pick up again. Nope.

WARNING: SPOILERS – HEED MY WARNING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO FIND OUT ONE SMALL BUT KINDOF IMPORTANT DETAIL

After a ton of passing out, and sleeping, and just overall boring plot line, there was one interesting part where the main female character, Teresa, turns out to be a turncoat. Who’da thunk? BUT THEN she turns out to have been lying about being a traitor to save the main character, Thomas. Say what now? Here’s my issue with this, because as a writer myself I know that one of the hardest things to do is come up with a really good plot twist that makes sense to everyone and will really rock their view of the book. This twist had the potential to do just that for Scorch Trials but because so much of the series had already been betrayals one after another (even Teresa telling Thomas not to trust her, and that whatever she did or said he should question) I was not the least bit shocked that she triple crossed him. To me it was just a bland plot twist.

So, I finished the book about thirty minutes ago – that’s why this post is a tad rambling… I’m still frustrated! But one thing has been bothering me more than anything else about this book since I stopped reading. I could find a dozen inconsistencies with the novel, but this one just irked me to my core. All of the people from the Glade (where the Maze is) ended up being named after famous people. For example, Alby= Albert Einstein, Newt= Isaac Newton, Thomas= Thomas Edison, etc. So for Christ’s sake, if everyone is named after someone famous, who the hell is Frypan named after??

All in all, if I were to rate it with stars I’d give it 3 stars. I actually absolutely loved the first half of the book, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the last half. That said, I did buy the third book of the series, so I’m going to have to suck it up and see if the third book, The Death Cure, is any better. It has a pretty cool name, so who knows. Maybe it’ll surprise me and CURE my ill feelings! Not a good pun? My bad.

I’m going to wait to read it though – I’m FINALLY going to borrow Gone Girl from my sister. I’ll give myself a break from horrible plot twists and read awesome plot twists instead.

Until next time,

Rachel