The Scorch Trials - James Dashner

tl;dr This book was… ok. Thats it. Just ok. The first was better. 


Description Now that Thomas and his buddies have escaped the maze, but the tests aren't over. Teresa is taken from their group, but nobody knows where she was taken to. Instead, a boy is found where she should have been, and they soon learn that new trials are about to begin. The gliders are dropped off in the Scorch, a barren dry land destroyed by the flare. WICKED has told the gladers they have two weeks to get through the Scorch and over the mountains so they're off again fighting for their lives in crazy situations. 


OK. So this book. We kinda know whats going on, but only vaguely. And then the weirdo tattoos that show up on the boys, what is the point of that? Like, it seems like there is some sort of actual point to them when they show up, but then you finish the book and you're like…. why? Plus, how did they get a tattoo without feeling it? I mean maybe they got them before the maze… but thats a ton of predicting and not knowing if those titles would have held true. Newt or Minho could have died. I just don't get it.



And lets talk about some of these characters, shall we? New guy Albie (the racist dragon?!)or whatever his name was: completely forgettable and one dimensional. Like, he was there but did nothing the entire time until the end, then you're like "what? That doesn't make sense". And Teresa's character became nothing in this book. In book one, she had so much potential and you think you'll learn more about her and their past in this book. But NO. Teresa gets thrown to the back of the story aside from Thomas's internal monologue of "Teresa… Where are you? Are you ok?". But then it becomes annoying when we meet Brenda and she hits on him, then he goes into guilt mode and I just ...



Over it. I hate love triangles and the way this one was done was bad. Not good. Do not like. And then theres the myriad of times that Thomas passes out in this book. I read a review on goodreads that said she counted 29 times where the chapter ended in "And Thomas passed out" or a variation of it. 



For real, ridiculous! Like I get that our bodies will take over when pain is too extreme and can cause you to lose consciousness. But that was just TOO MANY TIMES FOR A BOOK. TOO MANY. It almost made the book feel rushed, that to get to the next point the only way he could figure out how to get there was to have Thomas black out. UGH. Also, we meet mexican Jorge. In 98% of his sentences, he says "hermano/hermana".



For real, WHY??? I mean we all have our sayings…. but I don't know anyone who says those things THAT many times. For real, at one point, every. single. sentence (from Jorge) ended in "hermano". Like he can't open his mouth without saying hermano. Isn't that a Spongebob Character? I swear, there's an episode of spongebob where they are trying to talk to someone but they have to add in a weird word or sound every other word to make sense. I did not like that, it bugged me a lot. 



Anyways. I guess this book carried the plot forward but it wasn't as good as i hoped it would be, nor does it have the answered i hoped it would have. The end.