I read this on a whim recently, and though more modern than a lot of what appears on this blog, Scott Smith’s The Ruins was quite good.

A bunch of young people go on vacation to Mexico and end up travelling into the jungle to see their friends who are supposedly working on an archaeological dig. When they get there, they get trapped on a hill that’s covered with an evil plant that won’t let them escape. Things get grizzly pretty quickly.

The plot is a bit silly, but this is well written, and there were a few genuinely scary moments. It really reminded me of The Troop by Nick Cutter. I just looked it up online, and apparently Cutter openly acknowledged that this book directly inspired his. Both books follow a small group’s nightmarish weekend on a remote and lethal location, and both feature the timeless combination of things that burrow inside people and sharp knives.

This kind of survival horror isn’t my favourite genre, but this was enjoyable. I am going to give Smith’s other, more famous, novel, A Simple Plan, a read soon.