Special thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Groping Dutton for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts. Many thanks to NetGalley, Dutton, and Ana Reyes for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.3!** It's like she was forced to relive it. I appreciated that her character was willing to return home and face all her fears and it did get creepy. Salon - "House in the Pines" thriller author on the "dark side of nostalgia" with a narrator no one believes Maya comes across a YouTube video showing a young woman, sitting in a diner booth, suddenly keel over and die. Sitting directly across from this woman is none other than Frank, the same man who happened to be sitting right next to Aubrey at the time of her death.

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. If you were Maya, would you have confronted Frank in the bar? Do you think it was worth the risk to her own safety?stars rounded up. The House in the Pines was Ana Reyes’s debut novel. I listened to the audiobook that was narrated by Marisol Ramirez. The cover of this book initially pulled me in. You have to admit that it is pretty creepy! The beginning and ending of The House in the Pines were strong and atmospheric. I lost some interest when the middle part of the book took a slower turn and thus my 3.5 rating. The House in the Pines alternated between the past (before Aubrey’s death) and the present. 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. A fun debut novel! I liked this one a lot. The House in the Pines contains solid storytelling and an intriguing premise. An ancient poplar loomed at the entrance to the abandoned road, its rounded mass of huddled gray limbs reminding her of a brain. She passed beneath its lobes, twigs branching like arteries overhead as she entered the forest.-------------------------------------- Deep in these woods, there is a house that’s easy to miss.

Maya has struggled with the circumstances of Aubrey's death ever since. Due to this, she has understandably had trouble with sleeping and the pills sort of took the edge off, helped her to suppress the overwhelming anxiety.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? 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. 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?

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! 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.” This story follows Maya. When Maya was a Senior in high school, her best friend Aubrey, died suddenly, mysteriously and with no identifiable cause, directly in front of Maya's eyes. The only other person around, a young man named Frank, fled the scene.

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In an interview with The Mystery of Writing, Reyes said her novel was inspired by a cabin that she’s been thinking about for a long time.