Rating - ⭐⭐1/2
"Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine. Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there."
The Ruins is a standalone horror novel by Scott Smith.
I feel cheated. Going into this book I had no idea what kind of horror to expect, but I was thinking something along the lines of some kind of ancient creatures or something akin to The Descent. Maybe it was my own imagination and expectations that ended up ruining my experience, but what I ended up getting out of this was... disappointing.
The entirety of the book was disappointing, to be honest. I didn't care about the character at all and all their flaws, and especially their lack of thinking that got them into the situation it did. To be fair, I do like the idea of urban exploring and I did get a minor in archaeology so I get why people would go there, but to drop everything with no plan to help a stranger find his missing brother was not a good idea.
Once they are at the ruins (if you could even call a hole in the ground ruins which led to more disappointment for me) the story then drags on. This was a really strong slow burn with a tiny bit of body horror and not much else. I didn't like the type of horror, and I didn't like the pacing of the story. It wasn't until 85% into the book that we got any form of lore or explanation as to what was going on.
I should have just put it down but I kept reading in the hopes something exciting happened, but it remained pretty bland all the way through.
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