Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton, Ana Reyes, and Netgalley for an advance readers copy of The House in the Pines in exchange for an honest review. I always love reading Reeses book picks so I was excited to read this one. It started off pretty slow but still interesting in the first half of the book. The ending was interesting and definitely a different type of ending then I usually see in suspense novels so that was a fun difference! I just couldnt connect to many of the characters and just felt like this one fell a little flat for me. I definitely will check out this authors work in the future though because I feel like the writing and writing style was very well done.

3.5 stars rounded up. Interesting and different premise. Ending was a bit unsatisfying, but more realistic. I enjoyed a not common premise regarding the main way the person is able to "control" situations.

Genre: Thriller
Pages: 330
ARC: yes
⭐️: 3/5
Format: ebook

Synopsis: Maya is a girl prone to fanciful thoughts, but that doesn’t mean she’s hallucinating..does it? Did her old boyfriend Frank really kill her best friend without touching her?

7 years, and klonipin withdrawals later, a new viral video arrives on YouTube showing a promising young artist dropping dead at the hands of none other than..you guessed it..Frank. How is he doing it? How will she convince anyone in her life that he is behind these mysterious deaths?

💭my thoughts💭

I found Maya hard to believe as well. She’s a troubled person who seeks out substances to dull what happened so many years ago. And what happened exactly? Well, that’s a good question…I still don’t think I know. The ending was pretty anticlimactic in way of thrillers. I was expecting maybe a bit more oomph to it.

The descriptive writing was good and I like the aspect of Guatemalan heritage in there (guessing the author is Guatemalan?) anyhoo…it didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat like I was hoping.

Solid 3 ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. I’m exchange for the ARC, I have given my honest and unbiased review of this book.

A twisty edge of the seat thriller that will have you questioning every character and what you thought you knew about them.

The cover of the book makes this look to be a thriller but I didn’t find it that way at all. The first chapter draws you in but then the rest of the story fell flat. Was she crazy or was Frank a killer, by the end of the story I didn’t really care.

This story was engaging and had me guessing all the way through. I really loved the tiny bit about Guatemalan history. The reason I only gave it 3 stars is I did find it a little hard to believe at the end. Although I did appreciate the author's attempt to explain the "science" behind it.

This didn’t do it for me. I was worried it was magic realism, and glad it wasn’t, but I did t quite buy the plot line. Plus I didn’t like the way it went back and forth so abruptly between timelines (maybe that’s fixed in the final version).

Featuring ~ single 3rd POV, debut, dual timeline, addiction ~ drugs and alcohol

Maya is our narrator in the present and we have flashbacks of her friendship with Aubrey and relationship with Frank. Aubrey died 7 years ago and now a woman's death takes place with Frank close by. Could Frank be involved in both or is it just a coincidence?

Overall, this was fine as a debut. I can't say I was overly invested with the story or with how unreliable Maya was, but I'm not mad I read it. I wouldn't put this in the thriller category either, a psychological something, not sure what.

3/5
This book had some good parts and some parts that I thought could definitely have been better.
I liked the main character Maya as she had to go through healing to figure out the missing hours that she would go through from hanging out with her ex boyfriend Frank. I thought the book had a lot of potential but did get a little boring.

Maya is trying to mend her self from a traumatizing event that happened to her when she was a senior in high school. But then she sees a YouTube video of someone dying and all the trauma is back. Maya needs to find out why it's happening again and how. This psychological thriller explores the mind and the concept of consent and reality. Although the premise is promising and intriguing the execution fell slightly short. The journey to of the mystery was not equal to the reveal.

3/5 stars. This was my first book by this author. I wanted to love the story, but I’d say it was a solid 3 for me. It was good but some parts felt unrealistic.

First off thank you to Netgally, the publisher and the author for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. These opinions are my own.

Welp, this one fell short. For a thriller it did not grip me the way I hoped it would, nor were the thrills very...thrilling. DNF at 55%.

I don't know about captivating, but The House in the Pines is most certainly unique. This is Ana Reyes' debut novel and while I liked her writing overall, the pacing was much too slow for me here and the end felt like a pretty big disappointment. It didn't have much of a shock value, which I enjoy when I'm reading a thriller, and it felt really anticlimactic to me. This is a very slow-moving storyline, so it's probably a good thing that the book is on the shorter side at just over 300 pages, but man did those pages move at a snail's pace. I found my attention wandering because there wasn't really anything happening, and I would honestly call this more literary with an air of mystery. The journey is fundamentally about Maya trying to overcome her addiction without telling her boyfriend, and it is hard watching her struggle while she tries to figure out what happened all those years ago.

I feel like I just threw a bunch of negative things in this review, but I promise you I didn't hate it or anything, and I really did enjoy the world-building Reyes was able to do. Maya is a multi-dimensional character which is a win, and there is a little bit of murder that I was happy (I know), to have as well. The audiobook also provided an enjoyable listening experience, and I was very happy with Marisol Ramirez as the narrator. I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone of course, but most of the people who have enjoyed it liked that it was a fresh storyline and a complex plot. I do have to admit that I thought these things as well, so if you are a reader who appreciates these things and wants to give a debut author a shot, definitely pick up The House in the Pines.

I really wanted to love this book. It seemed promising and the initial premise was intriguing. It was easy to get into but it quickly became super disjointed and it seemed like the author was all over the place like they had a list of things they wanted included and just threw them all in. The main character was so unlikable and not in a fun, devious, or interesting way.

Things are just so nonchalantly brought up and left off and diving into Maya’s mind could have made it more interesting. As it stands it feels like I am just getting a list of things happening to her, her not reacting like any human being would, then on to the next. And it continues like that for 3/4 for the book. When things finally start to fall into place it takes the main character way too long to draw conclusions the reader came to instantly which makes it seem like it drags on.

I just don’t think the storyline was developed enough and the characters are so flat and the main character especially was void of emotion or rational thought 90% of the time. Even when everything unfolds it’s hard to relate to her decisions and feelings.

The ending seemed like one of plot convenience. Instead of creating a world and a lead up it’s just thrown in there and has no limits or rules. Like a game made up by a little kid that changes the rules in their favor any time you try to play along. It just seemed like the book took a weird turn out of absolutely nowhere and didn’t really take the time to flesh it out.

I really liked the plot line of her fathers book and it paralleling her experiences. I think that could have been a bigger part of the book and some of the superfluous things could have been left out. It really came and went where it would be a big plot point and then not mentioned again for a long time.

Over all this books needed a few rewrites before it should have been published. There are redeeming qualities to it and the writing itself isn’t bad, but it wasn’t executed well and I am left confused how Reese picked this one.


Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Randomhouse for this ARC.

To be honest, this was a rough start for me. The first quarter of the book felt rife with redundancies and struggled to move forward. However, I am glad I kept with it, because the story picked up steam once the protagonist began her journey to search for answers to a current suspected murder and the murder of her friend from years ago. The story departed from my expectation in a way that felt delicious. Wonderful setting - which is my favorite thing when reading. Propulsive writing and I was never distracted by the author. (often if I become aware of the author, that takes away from the story.) I would recommend this & already have!

This one was Not For Me. The build was too slow, the plot nebulous and a bit silly. The MC was not terribly likable, and all of that put together made this a slog.

Okay this book is SPOOKY! 😮 An unreliable narrator, Maya, is haunted by her past, and when a woman mysteriously dies the same way Maya’s best friend did a decade ago, she can no longer ignore the nagging question: What really happened all those years ago in the house in the woods? 🫣

Most of the time, Maya is drunk and in withdrawal from the pills she recently stopped taking. I think what Reyes did really well was making the readers FEEL Maya’s altered state of reality through a timeline that goes backwards and forwards, without actually naming that. This non-linear timeline does not start chapters with “Five years ago…” etc — you just sort of figure it out based on the context. I think for some people this would be a turn off, but I thought it was really reflective of Maya’s internal world.

This book is the definition of ATMOSPHERIC! Wow. The scenes about the house in the woods really drew me in and made me feel totally engrossed in the setting in a way I haven’t felt in a while.🌲🌲🌲

Where this book falls apart for me is the ending. I won’t spoil it, but the reveal was lackluster and unbelievable, and it sort of felt like the story just… ended. Such a bummer. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I rated it ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a very strong debut novel and one of the more original/less predictable psychological thrillers I've read in recent memory. The story begins with our protagonist Maya viewing a viral video showing an inexplicable death during a night of insomnia due to Klonopin withdrawal, but her history with one of the people in the video becomes the central mystery as she revisits her past to figure out what exactly happened during the period of her life that led her to her current state. I was mesmerized by this book, and although the ending felt a little unresolved, it was an enjoyable read overall and I look forward to seeing more from Ana Reyes.

This book was definitely interesting. I enjoyed the beginning and felt that it had a really great start. However, towards the end it felt really rushed and didn't seem to make a lot of sense. I loved the cover and I loved the idea of the plot. It just took me a really long time to get through the last half of the book.

This thriller was definitely a slow burn. I really liked that it was unique in the hypnotism aspect. It made for such an interesting storyline. Reading this story I couldn’t figure out how it would end but Frank definitely gave off creepy vibes. I wasn’t a huge fan of the addiction trope for the main character. That’s a little overdone in my opinion. But the end of this book… I’m not even sure what the heck happened. It was going so well and then I thought the ending fell a little flat. Overall I would recommend this one, but I didn’t love it.