Wayward: Wayward Pines: 2 (The Wayward Pines Trilogy)

by Blake Crouch

More and more, he was coming to realize that living in Pines was like living in an elaborate play whose curtain never closed. Everyone had their parts. Shakespeare could have been writing about Pines: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.

“ ‘Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in, or walling out.’ Robert Frost wrote that.”

Ethan started back toward town, the lights of the houses of Pines twinkling in the valley ahead. So peaceful. So perfectly deceptively peaceful.

Over the years of her residency, it had steadily dawned on her that Pines felt much closer to a prison than any afterlife, although perhaps there was no meaningful distinction. A mysterious and beautiful lifelong sentence.

In Pines, it was only ever small talk, and getting accustomed to that level of interaction had been one of the toughest hurdles to her integration.

For every perfect little town, there’s something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare.”