The Ruins

A complete load of crap! About as scary as tangling your foot in a vine, and just as annoying. This pathetic excuse for horror generates most of its effect by the sheer horror of the rubbish that gets published, BOUGHT and then MADE INTO A MOVIE! I enjoyed Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, although I thought it was laboured. This is just painful: a “horror” story about a few spoiled and unlikeable American jerks who go off to a remote place and get trapped by–da-dah–killer plants! the interior monlogues are laughably facile and superficial, and there is about as much excitement as in a large serving of blancmange. A tedious, lame, dull and awful piece of rubbish. I threw the book away!

This isn't a horror book that has any characters you can get emotionally attached to or care for, which really didn't work for me. The woman-identifying characters were incredibly one dimensional and clearly written by a dude. Though to be fair, all of the characters were one dimensional.

The most interesting part was the last 25% of the book and even then, the ending kind of made me roll my eyes. However if you like bleak endings, this one is for you.

I think this was pretty well written, but not my cup of tea at all. The buildup was adroitly done - creating a background of banal normalcy, yet with lots of good creepy details to set the tone. But, once the characters got to the crisis point, and realized what their situation was, I just didn't care anymore. Without giving too much away, the story is quite obviously hopeless, and I have trouble getting involved in such a case.

I tried to read this years ago and liked it okay, but the characters annoyed me. I have heard multiple recommendations for this recently, so I tried it again. I loved the slow creeping suspense and the way the characters slowly figured out what was going on. I liked way we saw a little bit from everyone's perspective. At first I didn't like that there were no chapters, but after a while I really enjoyed reading it that way. The American characters are all flawed and I think that was good for this story. However, there were times that the flawed characters devolved into caricatures. And that really annoyed me. Overall, I glad I gave this a second chance.

I really loved the setup and feeling of dread as the group of tourists find their fate. However, this book could use some editing as some parts either went on a little too long or felt repetitive. The body horror was not as intense as I had imagined, but I really enjoyed the setting. This book is very cinematic, and I am excited to see how the film and book differ once I watch it. Overall, this book has a bleak and helpless tone that I haven't really seen anywhere else. I liked how the group each died a different fate, and I found Eric's death of being eaten by the vines inside-out the most interesting. I also felt for Stacey and her choice to end her own life. There was truly no way out of this situation. Also the ending of the Greeks looking for Pedro only about to endure the same tragedies was great!

Told my partner the other day “I don't fear being murdered. I fear being tortured first.” This book really summed up that fear for me.

Horror is subjective and it might not be your cup of subjective-ness, but I am astonished by this novel. It hit every one of my nerves and me being forever thankful that I was cozy in my home. I did not need to know why the vines did anything or the Mayans because when in your life have you experienced something truly terrible come to you in the end in a neatly wrapped explanation? - the amount of peril of realizing you'd never escape this sort of hell as the days rolled on and you and everyone you're friends with start to starve, dehydration and delirium, and succumbing to this truth, becoming the vines play thing, was enough for me to be properly terrified and in awe.

Highly HIGHLY recommend the audiobook. Listened to it over a few nights as I was getting ready for bed. Loved this and deserves a million rereads

This books isn't fast it's an incredibly slow burn but it builds the tension so well, and I enjoyed it. Though at some places it did drag a little and took me longer to read than I was expecting. The characters were great for the most part flawed but they feel real even when unlikable. I love story that takes place in basically one setting, and this one did a great job not feeling to stale. 4.5 rounded up for Goodreads

This book was entertaining and reminded me often of the better Stephen King books, but it left a lot of questions unanswered, which was a bit of a letdown.

The characters were mostly likeable and the storyline itself was interesting. I found myself most drawn to Jeff and Mathias as characters. Scott Smith's writing style is clean and flows very well, helping the book classify as what I would call a “page-turner.” I moved while I was reading this book; there are still boxes unpacked because I stopped to read instead.

All in all, I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to others.

This was a good book. The monster was great and the atmosphere was even better. The only thing was I couldn't care about any of the characters. The only character I even came close to giving two shits about was Mathias. This group of protagonists were just the dumbest group I've ever read about. While I was reading this, every decision they made just kept getting dumber and dumber, and by the time they got stuck on the hill,  
I literally just didn't care at all. 
To me personally, I just saw it in a way where the characters almost went out of their way to get themselves stuck in the situation they were in. But hey, if they had been a bit smarter, there wouldn't really be a story worth telling. 
I would still recommend this is caring about the characters isn't an issue for you. The book was really fun, and again, the atmosphere was top tier