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Title: Ugh!
Review: Scott Smith sure has a way with titles. "A Simple Plan" was simply brilliant. "The Ruins" ruined my day.The problem is not the lack of originality; a novel needn't be original to be good. The difficulty lies in the characterizations. There are three types of characters in fiction: characters who are too smart all of the time (sometimes you can say this about Lee Child's Jack Reacher), characters who are too dumb all of the time, and characters with a more varied, more human intelligence. Every character in "The Ruins" is too dumb all of the time, even the stereotypical smart guy. They are so dumb, they deserve to die!
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