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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Frank knows just what to say and it seems they have similar interests. Before too long though, Maya begins to notice certain things about their time together that make her greatly uncomfortable. In fact, she becomes so ill at ease around him, she actually begins to fear him. The mystery of what happened to Aubrey and also the other woman at the diner is very interesting. While Frank is present for both deaths, there’s no evidence of any foul play by him. And no drugs or anything like that showed up during the investigations. 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? 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. Additionally, her mother, who has years of experience as an EMT, may be just the person to help Maya through the painful withdrawal process.

PENGUIN GROUP Dutton and Ana Reyes provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own. Publication date is currently set for January 03, 2023. This review was originally posted at Mystery and Suspense Magazine. In The House in the Pines, Ana Reyes delves into a complex female friendship and the fragile nature of memory to weave together a smart, eerie, and completely addictive story of psychological suspense. Reyes is a debut author to watch.”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.”

Maya finally feels able to face her past. She throws herself into an investigation, not only of what happened to her and Aubrey all those years ago, but also to the young woman at the diner. Ana Reyes' debut is chilling, atmospheric, and addictive—a perfect thriller. I didn't want it to end.” Now, another woman from Maya’s hometown has died in the same strange, unexplained way, and Maya believes only she can save the next innocent girl.

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? One night while not being able to sleep, Maya witnesses a woman drop dead in front of her ex boyfriend on a YouTube video. This is very strange, as her best friend, Aubrey, suddenly died in front of this same ex boyfriend, named Frank. 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.

Maya does her Miss Marple thing to try to find out what really happened to Aubrey, to find out how Frank killed her, and one more thing. During the few weeks in which she dated Frank, there were multiple episodes in which she lost hours of time. Did Frank drug her? There is peril aplenty, as we take Maya’s word that Frank is a killer, so all her activity might be putting her in mortal peril. If only the cops had taken her seriously, but you know the cops in such almost stories never do. At this point, the prescriptions have run out. She needs to stop. It's going about as well as would be expected, which is to say, not well at all. Then Maya makes a disturbing discovery. Pliny the Elder said Home is where the heart is, but how can a place that feels so home-like also be so terrifying? This reflects some events and concerns in Reyes’s life. The inspiration was mostly subconscious. I was living alone in a new city, cut off from any place I’d call home, when I wrote the first draft. This lonely feeling inspired one of the book’s major themes, which is the universal yearning to return to a place and time of belonging. That theme shaped the story and helped me build the titular house in the pines. - from the Book Club Kit Reyes incorporated several elements of her life into the book. In addition to struggles with addiction, both Maya and Ana are half Guatemalan. Both were raised in Pittsfield, MA. The book took seven years to write, and the gap between Aubrey’s death and Maya’s return to the scene of the crime is seven years.A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. A fun debut novel! I liked this one a lot. The House in the Pines contains solid storytelling and an intriguing premise. Years after a young woman's sudden death in her best friend’s kitchen, a viral video reopens questions left unanswered. What signs did you notice which demonstrated Frank’s manipulative character? Is it understandable that Maya missed or ignored these signs?

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. The things I liked: the conjunction between past and present, Guatemalan heritage and mysterious book of Maya’s father, the folklore, the psychological foundation of the book. 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. Maya once saw this cabin as an idyllic place, like a cottage from a fairy tale, but now she knows the danger that lurks beneath. In what ways were the various representations of home (Maya’s hometown, her family’s home in Guatemala City, Frank’s cabin, and even Pixan’s fictional home in the mountains) significant?Maya keeps having dreams about a cabin in the woods, a welcoming abode, with a warm blaze in the fireplace, the burning pine logs adding their scent to the room, the log walls offering shelter from a strong wind. It is cozy, feels like home. But there is danger there as well. Frank is there in the dreams, always there. She struggles to understand the sounds she hears, but realizes they are coming from Frank, who appears suddenly behind her, and she wakes, drenched in sweat. So, what’s up with that? I’m giving three solid stars because it was still intriguing, face paced, truly hooked me till the end. But I was expecting more satisfying ending!! Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is dealing with the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. When she meets Frank at the local library, inexperienced Maya is taken in by the older boy right away. It's not necessarily his looks, but more a certain magnetism he has that is hard to resist. If guilty pleasures could come in book form...side by side with Ben and Jerry's, trashy TV, and belting out show tunes in the shower, this one could hold its own...in the BEST possible way! 😉