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Abandon
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On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman, and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins - and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town, so they can learn
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Hardcover, 406 pages
Published
July 7th 2009
by Minotaur Books
(first published January 1st 2009)
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I'm an emotional wreck after reading this book; probably due to the Lana Hartman situation. What the hell was that all about? I really liked it up until that point - then it pissed me off.
Lawrence Kendall (History Professor), his daughter Abigail Foster (Journalist), two guides (Scott and Jerrod) and a husband and wife team of Paranormal Photographers (Emmett and June) head up to the ghost town of Abandon (originally called Hope by Bart Packer). Four members of the group are unaware they are the ...more
Lawrence Kendall (History Professor), his daughter Abigail Foster (Journalist), two guides (Scott and Jerrod) and a husband and wife team of Paranormal Photographers (Emmett and June) head up to the ghost town of Abandon (originally called Hope by Bart Packer). Four members of the group are unaware they are the ...more
Oye. After abandoning "Run" and finishing his "Pines" Trilogy, I think this will be the last I read of Blake Crouch for a long time. My biggest issue with this book is its description. It is the ultimate bait-and-switch that hints at supernatural elements that just aren't there. Take a look (spoilers):
"On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One ...more
"On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One ...more
AWESOME that is the only way to describe Blake Crouch Abandon he is the absolute genius of this genre his characterisation is superb the nasty characters brought the plot to life throw in a few nice guys makes it even better.
this novel shows what greed can do to everyone of us it also decides who lives who dies who pays the consequences I took my time to read this taking everything in it goes back to 1893 to 1980 which made it a bit difficult for me but VERY enjoyable at the same time.
GREED CAN ...more
this novel shows what greed can do to everyone of us it also decides who lives who dies who pays the consequences I took my time to read this taking everything in it goes back to 1893 to 1980 which made it a bit difficult for me but VERY enjoyable at the same time.
GREED CAN ...more
The year is 1893. The place is Abandon, Colorado. Population 123. Tables are set with Christmas dinner. "They're all gone." All of them, gone without a trace.
Fast forward to the year 2009. Another group of souls is in danger of suffering the same fate. This tale is told by flipping back and forth betwixt the two time settings, the older time period of far greater interest to me. I even learned a couple of new words. Slumgullion. Shadowgee.
A malignant smile, a snorty barkeep, an eye-watering sti ...more
Fast forward to the year 2009. Another group of souls is in danger of suffering the same fate. This tale is told by flipping back and forth betwixt the two time settings, the older time period of far greater interest to me. I even learned a couple of new words. Slumgullion. Shadowgee.
A malignant smile, a snorty barkeep, an eye-watering sti ...more
On Christmas Day in 1893 all the people in the gold-mining, mountain town of Abandon, Colorado vanished, leaving behind food laden tables and all their belongings. What can have happened to everyone?
Jump ahead to 2009. A small group of adventurers - toting food, tents and supplies - embarks for the ghost town of Abandon, to try to uncover what happened all those years ago.
The expedition consists of Lawrence Kendall - a historian/history professor;
Lawrence's estranged daughter Abigail Foster - ...more
Disappointing. I loved Recursion and Dark Matter and judging by the blurb I thought Abandon was going to be really good too.
It turned out the blurb was misleading. I was expecting something spooky and supernatural and intriguing. I got lots and lots of people being killed in really gross but definitely not supernatural ways. And it seemed endless. Every time someone escaped they got caught again.
Not my kind of book at all. I finished it because I wanted to know what happened so two stars for tha ...more
It turned out the blurb was misleading. I was expecting something spooky and supernatural and intriguing. I got lots and lots of people being killed in really gross but definitely not supernatural ways. And it seemed endless. Every time someone escaped they got caught again.
Not my kind of book at all. I finished it because I wanted to know what happened so two stars for tha ...more
4.5 STARS!
I liked this book a lot. When I first read the blurb, I couldn't help but think of Roanoke - I just know the bare bones, but an entire town disappeared without a trace. It also left me wondering if this story was going to move over to the supernatural (the way Stephen King did in the miniseries STORM OF THE CENTURY) or stick to reality.
Basically, I knew that in 1893, the entire town of Abandon disappeared into thin air. Everything was abandoned exactly as it were that day and no bodies ...more
I liked this book a lot. When I first read the blurb, I couldn't help but think of Roanoke - I just know the bare bones, but an entire town disappeared without a trace. It also left me wondering if this story was going to move over to the supernatural (the way Stephen King did in the miniseries STORM OF THE CENTURY) or stick to reality.
Basically, I knew that in 1893, the entire town of Abandon disappeared into thin air. Everything was abandoned exactly as it were that day and no bodies ...more
This book made me want to bash my head in with a pickaxe it was so plodding despite the REALLY interesting plot. I literally one arm crawled my way through this ill written nightmare just so I could see how it ended, I was THAT interested. Never again, my friend. I forgot that I even read it until just now, getting back from Christmas, seeing it on my desk. Ooops. Giving it one star because somebody else should have taken that (fairly interesting) plot and made a better book. Yick.
4.5 stars. I'll say one thing for Blake Crouch, he has an amazing imagination. OK I'll say two things, he can write a ripping yarn, usually with lots of murder and mayhem. Abandon was no exception. In 1893 the entire town's population disappeared on Christmas Day and no trace of them, not a single bone, has ever been found. They just walked out of their homes and vanished.
Fast forward to 2009 and a bunch of disparate people trek to Abandon to chase ghosts and maybe write a story about the myster ...more
Fast forward to 2009 and a bunch of disparate people trek to Abandon to chase ghosts and maybe write a story about the myster ...more
I’m not much into thrillers. The tried-and-true thriller formula goes something like this: person disappears; detective is called; detective interviews people whose names you can’t keep straight; red herrings are tossed about; person is found, sometimes dead, sometimes alive. The end. If you want to read an outside-the-box thriller, then get in line for Blake Crouch’s Abandon.
Abandon is a parallel story that seamlessly moves from 1893 to the present day by use of alternating chapters. It begins ...more
Abandon is a parallel story that seamlessly moves from 1893 to the present day by use of alternating chapters. It begins ...more
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This story started out well enough with the disappearance of an entire town and the mystery surrounding it. At first I was thinking ghost story. Unfortunately what you get is a rather bland hostage, wilderness, survival story...and it seemed to go on forever! It was also one long weather report. By 100 pages in I was so sick of reading about snow, I nearly put the book aside. It was a struggle to complete and when I reached the predictable ending, I was just skimming through the last few chapter
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A fascinating premise ... a promising plot structure set in two widely different time frames ... a clever mystery ... several interesting characters ... but then, after 1/3 of the way through, the story had degenerated into a series of no longer clever violent acts that left me uninterested in reading any further.
This one just didn't do it for me. It was a little too Scooby-Doo at times and I couldn't take it seriously. If Shaggy made a cameo and bit into a hash brownie it wouldn't have phased me.
3.5/5.
So. I am not a particularly big fan of terror books or even films for that matter. They tend to get under my skin and give me a hard time when trying to sleep. But when I discovered the Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch a couple of years ago, I was hooked. And after that, I occasionally come back to his work, pick up a kindle and dive in its mysteries. In view of the above, one could validly assume that I am not an expert of the kind and this would be a fair conclusion. But I will do my best i ...more
So. I am not a particularly big fan of terror books or even films for that matter. They tend to get under my skin and give me a hard time when trying to sleep. But when I discovered the Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch a couple of years ago, I was hooked. And after that, I occasionally come back to his work, pick up a kindle and dive in its mysteries. In view of the above, one could validly assume that I am not an expert of the kind and this would be a fair conclusion. But I will do my best i ...more
I don’t know why it takes me a million years to finish a book these days but I blame it on work and life fatigue. Lame, I know…This book got me out of a bit of a slump simply because I was obsessed with finding out what happened next. Abandon is about human survival and something putting an end to it, very, very cruelly. Crouch is a master at making that honest character or two and also at creating some really twisted baddies waiting to take them down but reading this guy for a while I can tell
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This book was hard to rate for me. I liked it and it kept my attention but then it just seemed choppy at times.
it wasn't awful but it wasn't great either. not what I was expecting.
I'm a fan of Blake Crouch from the WAYWARD PINES Series (and I've even written a few Wayword Pines stories for Amazon myself, shameless plug) so this was a treat to read some of his non-Pines work.
This story tells the tale of an old town called Abandon. The story jumps back and forth from modern times to the old west. There's a cache of gold supposedly buried somewhere in the town. So we get to see the origins of the cache from the 1800s, and we also get to see the story of the modern group sear ...more
This story tells the tale of an old town called Abandon. The story jumps back and forth from modern times to the old west. There's a cache of gold supposedly buried somewhere in the town. So we get to see the origins of the cache from the 1800s, and we also get to see the story of the modern group sear ...more
Wow! Blake Crouch is fastly becoming my new favorite author. This book was an amazing blend of the past and the present; how they "collided", mirrored each other and caused unspeakable pain to innocent people. This book was filled with excitement, climbing terror, horrifying experiences, and plenty of twists and turns that can cause you to turn the pages faster and faster. Through Crouch's vivid descriptions of the brutal, snowy terrain, I felt like I was present in the story. These harsh condit
...more
Set in the wilderness of the Colorado Rockies and told in two time frames (around Christmas 1893 and November 2009), this story is bound to have some snow in it. Very much of it, in fact. From ankle-deep to knee-deep to waist-deep and the characters are forced their way up and down the steep slopes and high passes by the author time and time again. Those poor suckers. Those greedy bastards. Well, some of them at least – the bad guys – and they’re not to be pitied. Others meet their fate on the m
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A shit ton of characters and time jumps galore made for a story that was a little hard to follow. And if you have trouble following what is going on then your enjoyment of the book dwindles drastically. Hence the 2 stars.
5 "ABANDON captivating "stars
When Abigail Foster, a freelance journalist joins a group of enthusiasts who want to explore are search for answers to a mistery of a ghost town called Abandon, she never expected for the journey to end in a fight for pure survival.
Ahead lay agrassy lane, lined with rows of weather-beaten structures - all that was left of Abandon
This story follows intertwined plots of events that happend on a Christmas day of 1893 and during the research expedition i ...more
This book was written well. I liked the alternating passages between past and present. It was a good story and many good characters. It just went on way too long. I most likely would have given it four stars had it just been edited down a bit.
Abandon by Blake Crouch
Reviewed by Russell Ilg
Abandon by Blake Crouch is by far one of the greatest Thrillers ever written. In this spring of many books being released there are going to be many to chose from, and this has to be the #1 book on your list. It is going to be huge and contend for every award out there. Blake is fairly new to the Thriller world with two books already, by far the best thrillers I have ever read until he wrote Abandon. He writes under the Thriller genre, but that does ...more
Reviewed by Russell Ilg
Abandon by Blake Crouch is by far one of the greatest Thrillers ever written. In this spring of many books being released there are going to be many to chose from, and this has to be the #1 book on your list. It is going to be huge and contend for every award out there. Blake is fairly new to the Thriller world with two books already, by far the best thrillers I have ever read until he wrote Abandon. He writes under the Thriller genre, but that does ...more
I read this book as part of a buddy read, and wouldn't have picked it up if it hadn't been for that, what a loss that would have been for me. This book was fantastic!! It did start out a little slow, it flips between 1893 and present day. At first I wasn't sure what was going on, but then with the slowly dolling out of info I got sucked into the characters of 1893. Didn't really care for the present ones and thought to myself, well that is ok, as I liked the old ones, but then we were given some
...more
Aug 19, 2015
Empress Reece (Hooked on Books)
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Shelves:
thriller,
horror,
zzexp_2016-horror-challenge,
32-below,
mystery,
zzexp_2016-read,
survival,
back-country
A 100-Year Old Mystery- 3.5 stars...
Going into this, I thought it was going to be a paranormal horror story but it really wasn't that at all. It's actually more along the line of a mystery/thriller. The paranormal aspect was a very small part of it and almost like an afterthought that wasn't followed through with. It's written as two parallel storylines, the past and the present, that converge at the end. I seem to have a thing lately for finding stories with dual plots which I don't mind if th ...more
Going into this, I thought it was going to be a paranormal horror story but it really wasn't that at all. It's actually more along the line of a mystery/thriller. The paranormal aspect was a very small part of it and almost like an afterthought that wasn't followed through with. It's written as two parallel storylines, the past and the present, that converge at the end. I seem to have a thing lately for finding stories with dual plots which I don't mind if th ...more
2015 {YES I AM BEHIND...stuff it} PopSugar Challenge with my fellow crustaceans Karly, Jess, Heather, and Nenia
A book that takes place in your hometown - Abandon - Blake Crouch
"Beginning in late 2005, and inspired by his relocation to Durango, Colorado, he researched and wrote a book set in the past and present in a remote mining town high in the San Juan Mountains. The resulting novel, ABANDON, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2009."
4 stars
So I have to admit, my rating is likely biased. I ...more
Rating 2* out of 5. Had I had any inkling what this book was really about, I would have never picked it up. It was touch and go as it was, with an indication of paranormal aspects. I thought the book would be about a group of people - including two paranormal photographers - discovering what happened in the deserted town of Abandon, clue by clue. This, with the back-flashes to Christmas 1893, when every man, woman and child disappeared without a trace, would have been interesting.
What it turns ...more
What it turns ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Around the Year i...: Abandon, by Blake Crouch | 3 | 45 | Apr 23, 2017 09:38PM | |
| Play Book Tag: Abandon by Blake Crouch - 3 stars | 1 | 12 | May 24, 2016 07:11PM | |
| paced reading hor...: abandon 100% spoilers | 47 | 38 | Sep 25, 2013 10:09AM |
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Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the forthcoming novel, Dark Matter, for which he is writing the screenplay for Sony Pictures. His international-bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, that was Summer 2015’s #1 show. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created Good Behavior, the T
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“Wind rips through the crags a thousand feet above, nothing moving in this godforsaken town, and the mule skinner knows that something is wrong. Two miles south stands Bartholomew Packer’s mine, the Godsend, a twenty-stamp mill that should be filling this box canyon with the thudding racket of the rock crushers pulverizing ore. The sound of the stamps in operation is the sound of money being made, and only two things will stop them—Christmas and tragedy.”
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“The owner as he crosses the board floor, moving between shelves, past stacked crates and burlap sacks bulging with sugar and flour. “Jessup? It’s Brady! You in back?” The twelve burros crane their scrawny necks in his direction when Brady emerges from the merc. He reaches into his greatcoat, pulls out a tin of Star Navy tobacco, and shoves a chaw between lips and gums gone blackish purple in the last year. “What the hell?” he whispers. When he delivered supplies two weeks ago, this little mining town was bustling. Now Abandon looms listless before him in the gloom of late afternoon, streets empty, snow banked high against the unshoveled plank sidewalks, no tracks as far as he can see. The cabins scattered across the lower slopes lie buried to their chimneys, and with not a one of them smoking, the air smells too clean. Brady is a man at home in solitude, often spending days on the trail, alone in wild, quiet places, but this silence is all wrong—a lie. He feels menaced by it, and with each passing moment, more certain that something.”
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