The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner (book 1)

James Dashner

YA Dystopian (younger range of YA)

Spoiler: None

Rating: PG (Some blood, death, etc, but nothing extremely graphic)

Coffee Beans: 2.5/5

I finished the Maze Runner by James Dashner and have mixed feelings about it. It's a good concept (young boys dumped in a maze with no memories of anything. All they have is a drive to solve the maze and to escape). There's a fair amount of mystery and things that go bump in the night.

Now, I know that this is intended for the younger spectrum of the YA crowd, but I still felt like it could have been developed more to hold the reader's attention better. The characters were a little flat and cliché for me to really get into and enjoy. Granted, there were some twists and turns I didn't see coming, I wasn't addicted to this book like others I have been to in the past, and it wasn't until the very end that I was like, "Whoa. That's cool!" when Dashner really caught my attention.

I didn't have the intention to pick up the second book in the series (Scorch Trials), but when those last few pages hit, that's when I got invested in the story and in the characters. Maybe book two will be better than book one, but do I have the motivation to pick it up and the time to invest in it when I have so many other great ones that are demanding my time? Probably not.

Pick it up and decide for yourself, but for me, it was just…meh.