Maya has been upset about her best friend Aubrey’s death for the last seven years, ever since she saw Aubrey collapse on the front porch while talking with Frank, a young man Maya met in the library earlier that summer. After Aubrey’s death Maya’s mom Brenda sent Maya to a psychiatrist, which was the start of the Klonopin addiction Maya was trying to detox from on her own. Maya had come across a video of a young woman named Cristina, who mysteriously dropped dead in a crowded bar, and Frank was next to her.

Positive that Frank had murdered Cristina in the same strange way he murdered Aubrey, Maya leaves Boston for her hometown, determined to find Frank and figure out exactly what had happened. She remembers him talking about his cabin, that he built himself, out behind his father’s house, and though she is terrified, she has to know the truth. Rediscovering her father’s novel, one he had written before his untimely death, provides insight that Maya had missed during her initial read-through seven years earlier.

I enjoyed Maya’s journey, from her initial trip to Guatemala where she discovers her father’s half-finished novel to her courage at confronting Frank and finally uncovering the truth behind Aubrey’s death. Ana Reyes has written an interesting novel that drew me in and kept me guessing throughout.

THE HOUSE IN THE PINES follows the story of a woman named Maya who long ago witnessed her friend's sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget. With only hazy memories of the past, now Maya is looking for answers, but what she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed.

I have to say, I was initially drawn into the mystery surrounding Maya's past, but I soon realized that the story involved an unreliable narrator, with themes of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse at the center of the story, which I've read so many times now, that it felt a bit stale.

There is a fascinating element to the story however, which is part of the big reveal at the end, but while I enjoyed this debut, it didn't hit my top reads for the month.

*many thanks to Dutton and netgalley for the gifted copy for review

This story leads the reader in one direction, and abruptly heads in another. What seems to be happening turns out to be a mystical experience. Although I really enjoyed the beginning of the story, I didn't appreciate the twist.

This is a page-turner, one that I read quickly in order to find out what was actually going on. We definitely have an unreliable narrator and the author gives us all kinds of reasons not to trust her: traumatic memories, family history of mental illness, alcohol abuse, and drug withdrawal. Although in reality there's no way someone could be sleuthing out a murder mystery in the condition this woman is in, all of her many issues served to add to the elements of the plot.

I liked the book overall, but I have mixed feelings on the resolution:

Positives: This is an original/unexpected resolution. I liked that the reality of the situation, when revealed, makes sense of the entire rest of the plot and clarifies every action/decision/motivation of our unreliable narrator and also of those around her.

Negatives: The ending was a bit too implausible, although it is original. The ending was also just a bit too neatly wrapped and glossy. Instead of going into more detail about the aftermath of the actual thriller we've just read, the last few pages are filled the somewhat forgotten minor characters we haven't heard from for most of the story (hello, Dan's parents!).

I would rate this book a 3.5 if possible, but giving a solid 3 stars. I only wish the ending had not been so quick and tidy.

Thanks to Netgalley, and to the publishers, for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A young woman still dealing with the death of her best friend is horrified to learn that another person has died in the same mysterious way. As the woman sets out to discover the truth behind the odd circumstances, she must face her own buried memories. Author Ana Reyes impresses in parts with her debut but struggles to pull the entire story together in The House in the Pines.

Seven years after her best friend, Aubrey, died in front of her, Maya has moved from her tiny Pennsylvania town to Boston and tried to form a new life for herself. She has a steady job at a garden center; it’s not exactly rocket science, but she’s good at what she does and likes it well enough. She also has a boyfriend, Dan, who loves her. They’ve recently moved in together, and Maya feels like her life is starting to resemble something called normal.

Because for the longest time, her life wasn’t normal. If she lets herself think too hard about it, she’s still devastated by Aubrey’s death. What hurts even more is that no one believed Maya at the time that Aubrey’s death wasn’t an accident. Maya thinks her then-boyfriend, Frank, killed Aubrey. The circumstances, though, were so bizarre that even Maya has doubted herself at times. One minute Aubrey and Frank were standing and talking to one another; the next Aubrey was on the ground.

Therapy and drugs have helped Maya mute much of the past. Dan doesn’t know about the medication she was taking, and he also doesn’t know that recently Maya ran out of it and has been experiencing withdrawal. Add to that the fact that Maya sees a video of another young woman sitting across Frank in a diner who dies in a way eerily similar to Aubrey, and these days Maya’s semblance of normal has spun out of control.

Seeing the video reignites in Maya the deep desire to prove that Aubrey’s death wasn’t an accident. She goes back to her childhood home in Pennsylvania to stay with her mother while she retraces her steps from seven years ago. Maya is convinced that if she re-examines everything with the clear-eyed approach that time and distance should have given her, she’ll be able to solve Aubrey’s murder once and for all.

Going back means Maya will have to face her past. She’ll have to deal with the problematic relationship she had with Frank and that he may have mistreated her in some way. The trouble is that there are holes in Maya’s memories, and she’s sure that Frank is responsible for those too. If she can find a way to root out those experiences, she’ll have all the answers. She’s not sure, however, whether she wants to face the truth.

Author Ana Reyes reveals in her note at the back of the book that this novel started as a thesis project in her MFA program, and in many ways it reads like one. Reyes’s pacing and the inclusion of Maya’s Guatemalan heritage will keep readers engaged. Although the start of Maya’s story sounds like so many other unreliable, drug-dependent protagonists, her yearning to discover the truth rings true.

The book falters in places, though. A subplot about Maya’s writer father, who died before she was born, offers some interesting side anecdotes. Despite the obvious wish of the narration to tie Maya’s father’s unfinished manuscript to the mysterious deaths, the connection feels forced. Readers may wonder whether the narration is stretching itself too thin in many scenes to accomplish too many things all at once.

Also, Maya is presented as being in her mid-20s at the start of the story, yet she doesn’t sound much older than her 17-year-old self in many scenes. Part of this could be attributed to her inability to grow as a person due to the horrific circumstances around Aubrey’s death; part of it feels like lack of character development on the mechanical level. The book bounces back and forth between present day and the past, causing the naivete of the writing rather than Maya as a character to be the focus.

The climax and the cause of Aubrey’s death might cause more skeptical readers to raise an eyebrow. The narration pushes the boundaries of the suspension of disbelief in more than one place. Ultimately, however, the book is a fairly satisfying thriller. Those who want a quick read, particularly attached to a celebrity book club, will want to pick this one up.

Plot:
Maya is dealing with substance withdrawal and trauma from losing her best friend, Aubree. She sees a video online in which another woman, Christina, dies under similar circumstances as Aubree. Determined to find out what happened to both Aubree and Christina, Maya goes back home to investigate and find out what happened to her ex, Frank.

Characters:
Maya is a troubled individual with a history of substance abuse and mental health issues, stemming from her mother's side of the family. Despite being half Guatemalan, she has little connection to her heritage. Despite her struggles, she is not an unlikeable person.

Frank’s backstory is messed up, but it falls flat. His father used hypnosis techniques to manipulate him and his mother, and Frank learned to apply the same techniques to other people and turned into a murderer.

Overall Impressions:
The premise of this book was good and I had high hopes for this debut, yet it not only read like a debut, it felt laking in some areas like character development. The story often focuses too much on Maya’s flaws and the flashbacks don't contribute to the plot until the end. I ended up skimming a lot which I typically don’t do, because a lot of the details felt unimportant to me. Unanswered questions remain, such as what happened to the first girl, Ruby.

Thank you NetGalley and Dutton for an advanced readers digital copy of this book.

There's nothing I love more than an unreliable, messy narrator. Maya has used prescription meds and binge drinking to try and push down memories of when her best friend died- but they are all coming out since she saw the viral video of that woman dropping dead in the restaurant booth, seemingly on a date...with her ex-boyfriend. Who, by the way, she also feels is responsible for her friends death. However, she can't prove anything other than a gut feeling. Which is how she ended up on prescription meds in the first place.
Now trying to kick her habit, going through horrible withdrawal and not being able to explain it to her now live-in boyfriend because she forgot to tell him she was on Klonopin in the first place-oops- Maya is going home to finally put the past to rest. And hopefully her ex in prison. Unless he finally gets to her, too.
The build up to the mystery surrounding her ex, Frank, and his potential culpability in the death of these 2 girls had me on the edge of my seat, up late at night. But when Maya finally realizes the dark secret behind the time lapses she experienced when spending time with Frank, and the confrontation with him- the pacing raced and everything spilled out and the sense of dread we'd been building ended without an OH MY GOD moment, I loved the idea of this book, and it seemed as if it was going to explode...but instead was more of a fizzle.
The first three quarters of the book were really exciting, but the ending left me a bit disappointed. I think perhaps my expectation of explosive mind-blowing twisty endings made this impossible to live up to- so I recommend this because in the end I DID stay up til 3am finishing it!

Maya has lived seven years with the memory of seeing her best friend just drop dead in front of her. Maya was sure that the enigmatic man she had been spending a lot of time with for the previous few weeks was responsible; he was standing right there with them. Something strange had been going on, but Maya simply couldn’t figure out what it was. Her memory was a bit hazy in spots and she couldn’t account for some of the hours she spent with Frank.

Now she’s living with a loving and kind boyfriend. She’s trying to kick the secret addiction she’s had to a prescription medication — the meds have helped her cope with what she went through. She is hoping to move forward and find some peace without the medication. But then a video that gets a lot of views online takes her right back to what happened with Aubrey. In the video, a young woman sitting in a diner suddenly tips forward and dies. And as with Aubrey’s death, there appears to be no physical reason for it. The kicker? Frank is sitting across from the woman in the diner.

Maya feels she has no choice but to return home to investigate. She asks questions of the waitress and a friend of the dead woman. And she tries to remember more about what happened to her and Aubrey.

At home, Maya comes clean with her mother about putting herself into detox. And she remembers the manuscript she had been reading at the time she met Frank. The unfinished story was written by her Guatemalan father, who died before she was born. She finds it and reads it again, and she starts to believe there are messages in the book that can help her, if she can just figure out how.

Being back in her hometown, with her mom, with the memories of Aubrey and Frank, Maya is still sure Frank is a killer. But she still wonders sometimes if her own brain is betraying her. After all, her late aunt was seriously mentally ill, and Maya’s unfounded accusations about Frank only made her sound unhinged. And they led to her being dosed up on the medication that she now is trying to kick. Is her paranoia all in her head? Or is the truth of what happened to Aubrey and the woman in the video — and even Maya herself, though she didn’t die — hidden somewhere in her mind? The key to the answers may lie in Frank’s cabin in the woods.

This suspense book had me wondering what exactly was going on. Maya is fragile and haunted and I felt so much for her. She wants to move forward and be happy with the good man she’s found, but the past and her uncertainty and addiction are preventing her from finding peace. She puts herself in danger by going back to her hometown and confronting Frank, but it’s the only way to finally free herself and know the truth — whether it’s that she’s right about Frank being the villain, or that she is dealing with serious mental illness. I started to feel fairly strongly maybe halfway through the book that I knew what was going on, but the book still kept me guessing a bit longer. Then I knew for sure and was still held on the edge of my seat by wondering how it would play out.

The House in the Pines is a strong debut, a compelling psychological thriller.

While I enjoyed the premise of the story, something was missing for me. I cannot put my finger on it.

Maya is coming down off of her Klonopin and has been drinking to get herself to sleep and to just cope. She witnessed her best friend drop dead next to her older boyfriend years earlier and cannot get it out of her mind that he had something to do with it. When she witnesses a video of another woman just falling out dead with her ex sitting right there, she knows she has to figure out the truth. No one believed her the first time. She has a hard time herself wondering what was real or not.

It dragged a bit for me in the middle but the ending was great. I loved how she worked it all out. The mind can play tricks on us and Ms. Reyes found the perfect way to use that in her story.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for this copy for review.

🔑 A R C • R E V I E W 🔑
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Title: The House In The Pines
Author: Ana Reyes
Rating: 4/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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The House In The Pines is a debut novel, which was recently picked as January’s Reeses book club pick. It has a solid and unique premise, one that will have you wanting answers from page one! This one is popcorn thriller with a slow burn and an unreliable character. I felt myself drawn to the mystery of Frank Bellamy and the significance of the key, which kept me turning the pages.
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I’m really starting to vibe with the unreliable narrator trope - give you a sense of not knowing what or who to believe the entire book. I also really appreciated all of the information given regarding Guatemalan culture and their history. I learned new information regarding a culture / history from this book and that is something I always treasure.
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This story is told in a dual timeline - Maya as an adult and Maya prior to her friend dying. I am a huge fan of the dual timeline, and I really liked the glimpse into who Maya was prior to her addiction and death of her friend but I wish that the author formatted this differently… Maybe titled the chapters “then and now” or made it in the timeline sense.. I feel like the story would have flowed a bit better but thats just my opinion.
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I wanted more details into the girls deaths; what exactly was considered the cause of death, let’s face it I wanted more death. The last 25% of the book felt more fast paced and I was hoping for that wrapped up tightly ending, but instead it was a little loose, leaving me a bit underwhelmed.
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Overall, solid debut with a great premise and concept. A little slow at times but intriguing enough but definitely a book worth checking out! The House In The Pines was just released on January 3rd! Go grab your copy now!
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Huge thank you to @netgalley, @anareyes and for my ARC in exchange for my honest review!
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#bookreview #fourstarread #interestingconcept #uniquepremise #mystery #thriller #popcornthriller #debutnovel #eARC #electronicavdancedreaderscopy #ebook #netgalley #netgalleybookreview #recentrelease #reesesbookclubpick #accioliteraryescapesreviews #readingismyescape #thekeyholdsalltheanswers #hypotherapy #thehouseinthepines #anareyes

3.5⭐️

<b> He unfurled his pale fingers, and Maya knew what she would see when she looked down. She knew, but she’d come too far to turn back, and she too was the type who needed to know how the story ended.</b>

Maya’s friend, Aubrey, died in front of her seven years ago, and Maya can’t explain it, but she knows that Frank had something to do with it. When Maya sees a video circulating online of a girl in a diner dying on camera, she notices Frank sitting across from her. Maya’s recently been forced off of Klonopin when her dealer suddenly stops responding, and has been experiencing symptoms of withdrawal, including insomnia, and has been self-medicating with alcohol.

In the throes of withdrawal, and after getting too drunk and her boyfriend’s parent’s house, Maya resolves to return home to uncover the truth about what Frank has done and to bring him to justice. The book follows Maya in the present simultaneously as 17 year old Maya as she remembers everything that Frank made her forget.

I had a hard time liking Maya at first. She’s hiding her withdrawal from her boyfriend, Dan, and she doesn’t seem to care about anyone other than herself. Even past Maya was infuriating with her jealousy and obsession with Frank. I liked her much more by the end, I supposed because she’s no longer influenced by Frank, but she’s still not my favorite. This book was gripping and easy to read, but the ending fell a little flat. We don’t really know what happens to Frank, but Maya’s justified by having everyone believe her this time around and settles back into her life.

Maya is just starting to get her life back on track when she sees a viral video, and learns that the man who got away with killing her best friend Aubrey when they were teenagers has done it again. The video itself seems fairly innocuous. Grainy security footage shows a man and a woman walking into a diner, ordering some food and having a conversation. Next thing you know, the woman collapses onto the table, dead. Tragic, but hardly indicative of foul play.

But Maya recognizes the man in the video as her ex-boyfriend Frank, who had nearly come between her and Aubrey seven years ago. Maya had witnessed the two having a seemingly innocent conversation right before Aubrey dropped dead, just like the woman in the video had. Back then, she had been convinced that Frank had killed Aubrey somehow, but no one had believed her, not the cops, not her mom, and certainly not the psychiatrist her mom hired to help Maya cope with her grief:

QUOTE
He said her fears about Frank were delusional but assured her that she wasn’t the first to react with magical thinking to a death so sudden and unexpected. Less than two out of every hundred thousand people suddenly drop dead for reasons that can’t be explained by an autopsy.

Some cultures blame such deaths on evil spirits. The mind will always try to explain what it can’t understand–it will make up stories, theories, whole belief systems–and Maya’s mind, Dr. Barry said, was of the type that saw faces in clouds and messages in tea leaves. Patterns where others saw none. It meant she had a good imagination–but one that could trick her.
END QUOTE

In the aftermath of this trauma, Maya flees her hometown for college in Boston, throwing herself into partying and barely scraping her way to a degree. Along the way, she meets Dan, a solid, dependable law student. She doesn’t expect to fall in love, but the two establish a strong connection that lasts far longer than she’d ever believed possible.

Their bond is tested when a series of poor choices involving prescription drugs, alcohol and secret-keeping leads to a particularly mortifying episode involving his parents. Maya decides to head back home to dry out and, more importantly, attempt to lay her fears about Frank to rest. As with everyone else in her life, Dan doesn’t really understand her paranoia about her ex. There are, after all, plenty of reasonable alternatives for why the young woman in the video had suddenly collapsed, that have nothing to with Frank being some sort of mystic murderer:

QUOTE
Cristina could have gotten high right before she and Frank walked into the diner. That would explain how she’d seemed okay walking in, perfectly upright, only for the drugs to hit her when she sat down. Maya could picture this. She knew how easy it was to lose track of how many pills you had taken or what all you’d added to the cocktail. She wondered if this was ultimately what she shared with the dead woman, something other than dark hair and eyes: the tendency to get very high sometimes, as if trying to rise above the world on a bed of clouds.
END QUOTE

Coming back to Pittsfield turns out to be a better choice than Maya had hoped for, as it gives her the opportunity not only to play sleuth, but also to recover the manuscript her late Guatemalan father had been working on before he was murdered himself. She and Frank had originally bonded over Guatemala, and now Maya wonders whether the key to this mystery lies in the words her father wrote before she was even born. Can she find something within his manuscript’s pages that will help protect her as she readies herself to confront Frank about Aubrey?

This was an unusual thriller that does a truly impressive job of straddling that fine line between fantasy and believability. While utterly rooted in logic, the book is rich with supernatural tinges, really immersing the reader in Maya’s fanciful, and occasionally horrifying, reality. I personally wasn’t a fan of Dan, but I really enjoyed the exploration of Maya’s troubled relationships otherwise, particularly with Aubrey and with her mom. It was also great to see the contrast between the way Maya was treated by the cops in the present day versus just seven years ago, as policing continues to evolve.

Definitely pick up this book if your favorite aspect of the psychological thriller genre is the psychological. Saying any more would be giving away the novel’s clever, surprising and ultimately satisfying big twist.

This is a Reece Book Club Pick but I've had it on my Kindle for a while and then got a physical copy as well so I KNEW I needed to read it ASAP.

And honestly, it wasn't hard to read quickly. I dove right in and got hooked. The story is told from the MC's point of view in third person but does start to go back in time to tell her story in first person - I personally love some change up of POV so this was really cool and helped to differentiate between then and now.

I called what was "going on" pretty early on, but that didn't really diminish from the interest I had. And at first I had zero clue so there was that.

In all, it was an intriguing read - more mystery than thriller - from a debut author I'm looking forward to reading more books from!

! Just a bit of language in this one.

My rating: 4.2*

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Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the gifted copies. All opinions are my own.

It really does break my heart a little to not adore this book. Normally RBC thriller picks are amazing, but I didn’t love this one. It was slow yet chaotic. I will definitely read more by this author, because she clearly has a mind for writing!

*Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton, Ana Reyes, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Initially, we meet Maya, our unreliable narrator, who is suffering from drug withdrawal of klonopin, an anti-anxiety aid that also helps with sleep. Seven years after the death of her best friend, Aubrey she is still struggling with the memory of her friend's death and the man who caused it, her boyfriend Frank. When we first meet her, she is living with boyfriend Dan in Boston, working at a plant center and pretending to work on her writing, which has suffered with her klonopin addiction. When she comes across a video of a girl dying in a diner very suddenly, she sees Frank at the same table. The girl's death is very similar to her friend Aubrey's death and Maya can't let it go. After an embarrassing dinner at her boyfriend's parents house, she decides to travel to her hometown to deal with her withdrawal and try solve the mystery of Aubrey.

After seven years later, she has Klonopin withdrawals, hiding the truth from her boyfriend Dan she’s living with, suffering insomnia and obsession about a YouTube video that shows a young painter named Cristina dies behind her boyfriend’s eyes as they sit at the dinner. That boyfriend is the same man haunting her for seven years, who might be responsible for her best friend’s Aubrey’s death.

No one believes Maya about the circumstances surrounding Aubrey's death seven years ago. But she perseveres. What I loved about this story is how real it felt. We have our protagonist dealing with severe withdrawal. We are not sure if we believe her memories of if any of it really happened. There is also a very cool side story about the death of her Guatemalan father and the history behind it. I just loved this book so much. It kept me guessing and that is the best part of a book.

What an interesting concept and execution! I’m so glad I got to read this one and it makes me want to read more from the author!

I can definitely see how this was a Reese’s book club book choice! It’s so good from start to finish and will keep you guessing late into the night! Highly recommend!

This psychological thriller is from a debut author! It is fast paced and kept me flipping the pages. A quick-read with a lot of punch to it! It highlights how our memory can put aside the truth to help us survive.

When Maya stumbles across security footage that shows a mysterious death in her hometown, she also finds that a dangerous man from her past is inextricably tied to it.

<u>The House in the Pines</u> had a really strong start and a very intriguing plot, but everything started to fizzle out around the final third of the novel. More domestic suspense than a true thriller, the reveal is very obvious and the entire plot proves to be all pretty surface level. I had really high hopes for this novel from the get-go, but unfortunately the conclusion was a big let down.

As an author’s debut novel, I think she did a pretty good job. I just don’t think it’s worth all the hype it’s getting due to Reese Whitherspoon and her team choosing it for their bookclub pick. I think the premise of the story is good but the ending was pretty lackluster. You do have to pay attention while reading though because it flips between two different times, 7 years apart. You may start a chapter thinking you’re reading about the current year but then a couple paragraphs in realize it’s actually the past (and vice versa). The author also keeps you on your toes of not being quite sure if the main character is alcohol impaired, having drug withdrawal symptoms, or having a psychotic episode. All are possible explanations for the thoughts going through her head.

Whereas I didn’t fall in love with this book, I do see promise in the author and look forward to reading her next book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for gifting me with an advanced copy to read and review (if I choose to).