I watched the movie and got curious about the book. Honestly, I prefer the movie. It’s far tighter, much better dialogue, and the various arcs feels less contrived and interesting to me.

In this one, the brothers dialogue is fairly cringe worthy to me; not in an intentional way. They feel like weird caricatures because the craft behind the dialogue felt like it was playing into tropes yet not quite pulling them off. The agency for some characters that are empowered in the film is not so here, they’re used as a prop for a gotcha moment that I could take-or-leave.

The boy-fire fighter relationship is much more developed in the film, and so the payoff works. In the book the dialogue is incongruous with what actually happens and so the ending actually feels quite unearned.

However, the shade of the mountain scene, I think, is particularly good and at a higher level then the other craft of the book, which feels very commercial thriller. I wouldn’t be surprised if that scene was the impetus for the book; or a really clear visual touchstone for it, if not.

I like all of the characters and the reworked events better in the movie, but because of the format you don’t get the working knowledge of the people who live in the area as much, which I think people complained about in their reviews. Can’t do toooo much about that in a tightly paced 1:45 long movie though, imo. The thing you need to nail is character, and the movie feels like the best served version of that. Which is wild! How often does that happen?