The House in the Pines: A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller - a twisty thriller that will have you reading through the night

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After many years mourning the death of her friend Aubrey during high school, Maya decides to return to her hometown in the Berkshires to find out. A YouTube video has surfaced of a young woman sitting across from a man named Frank...the SAME man who was with Aubrey the night she died. In the video, this new woman appears to drop dead while her gaze is firmly trained on Frank.

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes | Waterstones

In the past, Maya is obsessed with the fact that Frank drove Aubrey home. She finds them together and is jealous. Maya and Aubrey fight. Aubrey says Frank is the one who is controlling and jealous. This was a book I had high hopes for, but it failed to wow me. I put this in the liked but didn't love category. The author does a good job looking at addiction and memory. This book was atmospheric which I love in books, but again, I thought this was just ok at best. It was a little slow and when the reveal happened, I wasn't overly excited about it. The best part of this book for me was the atmosphere the author created.Maya’s aunt Lisa had a severe mental illness and self-medicated with vodka and drugs. She died in her 20s.

House in the Pines by Ana Reyes - Book Club Chat Review: The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes - Book Club Chat

As someone who is not a fan of paranormal mysteries and was really unhappy about the plot twist of this recent book into the paranormal, I hate to even say this, but if this book had to be a thriller, I think it would have worked better as a paranormal. It would have been scarier, and the author wouldn’t have had to work so hard at the end to convince us that murder-by-hypnosis could actually be a thing. The way the book was, it just came off to me as weird and confusing, not scary. Things That Didn’t Make Sense to Me About House in the Pines Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. If it were guaranteed to work, would you ever consider undergoing hypnotherapy to correct a habit or forget about a painful experience? Why or why not? Ana Reyes said of The House in the Pines, “The idea of home, though always important to the story, emerged as a theme in ways I hadn’t expected.”Can we just be DONE with the unreliable drunk woman in the window of the train across the street crap at this point? It is suuuuuuuuuuch a dead horse that has been beaten to a pulp. How did the alternating timelines contribute to the novel? Do you enjoy this writing structure in general?

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes | Goodreads

If you could please stop being so cute and coming off as such a nice, friendly person to make it easier for me to avoid your terrible book club selections I would really appreciate it. If you can’t do that, then when it comes to the options you select for us to read, I’m telling you . . . . . Seven years later Maya is living contentedly with her boyfriend although she has never gotten over Aubrey's sudden death. One day Maya comes across a UTube video of a girl dying in a diner and guess who is sitting across from her when it happens? Yes, it was Frank in the video. Now how's that for a coincidence. Maya makes it her mission to find out what happened to this girl because she knows now he did kill Aubrey but how can she prove it. Again, Steven bringing the common sense. I feel like he is the only one who might understand all this.

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Frank admits he had to kill Aubrey because she figured out his game AFTER he gave her a book on hypnosis. He says he “gave Cristina what she wanted” which was to die on camera. I believe in the unique abilities of human brain and how it could be manipulated but some parts of the explanations about events seem a little illogical for me! That said, I was not a fan of a woman lead character, once again, harboring alcohol and drug abuse. I’m extremely tired of this plot device in thrillers. It’s overdone at this point. Isn’t it interesting two healthy young women dropped death after talking with the same guy? Is he death whisperer? Is he an evil magician?

The Place Beyond the Pines - Rotten Tomatoes The Place Beyond the Pines - Rotten Tomatoes

A big component is that Maya has gaps in her memories of her time with Frank and what happened with Aubrey. So with that, she becomes somewhat of an unreliable narrator and the reader has to decide if what Maya is relying is actually the truth. Many thanks to NetGalley, Dutton, and Ana Reyes for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.3!** In this novel we meet Maya, Dan, and Frank’s parents. How did the actions and beliefs of their parents impact each of these characters? To what degree do you think an individual has the ability or responsibility to overcome the influence of their parents?

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the older man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. After the tragedy, Maya drowns herself in alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Maya gets off drugs and begins to work on finishing her father’s book. Spoiler Discussion for The House in the Pines Powerfully eerie and atmospheric, The House in the Pines is a compelling mix of psychological thriller and dark fairy tale. By focusing not on whodunit but how and why, Ana Reyes’s stellar debut explores the many ways our memories can fail us—and how they can set us free.” I am so confused at this point. Is this a murder mystery, a paranormal, an unreliable narrator thriller, an addiction recovery story, a metaphor about religion and renewal, or the story of a teenager being groomed and abused by an older man? (Spoiler: it’s all of them.) Dan’s friend, who is a clerk at the DA ( ah, now we know why Dan was a law student) smuggles a document out of his office for Maya that shows that Oren was brought in for questioning.