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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Exactly. That's definitely what I was going for, that dark side of nostalgia. - from the Salon interview 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. These questions have been tailored to this book’s specific reading experience, but if you want more ideas, we also have an article with 101 generic book club questions. 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! The book isn’t compelling or believable as a thriller, but the author has potential in other directions.

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. 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.” Professional Book Nerds - Talking The House in the Pines with Author Ana Reyes by Joe Skelley - audio – 40:00

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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. 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? Still struggling to emerge from the wake of the tragedy she witnessed the summer before she left for college, Maya Edwards has built a life for herself with a nice guy named Dan and has vowed to stop using Klonopin to manage anxiety and insomnia. Then “Girl Dies on Camera” appears on social media. In it, a young woman pitches over dead at a table in a diner in Maya’s hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As Maya sees to her horror, the woman was with Frank Bellamy, an older man/weirdo she dated that terrible senior summer. Frank was present when her best friend, Aubrey West, died the same way as the woman in the video, with no cause ever determined. Maya’s always thought Frank had something to do with it. Now she's sure and takes a trip home to see what she can find out. As a thriller, Reyes’ debut is weak. The suspense is minimal, with no sense that Frank is coming for Maya or that it actually matters whether these crimes are solved. In fact, the main threat to Maya’s well-being is the difficulty of Klonopin withdrawal and the heavy drinking she is doing to get through it, endangering her relationship with Dan, and the most interesting storyline concerns Maya’s mother and father. Brenda Edwards met Jairo Ek Basurto while on a missionary trip in Guatemala; he was murdered at the age of 22 before Brenda even knew she was pregnant. He left behind an uncompleted manuscript which Maya translated around the time she met Frank but then stuffed in a drawer; it turns out to have inspiration for her now. One of the most interesting conversations in the novel is between Maya and her mother, discussing the manuscript and the idea that our souls have a “true home” elsewhere. One would rather read a book about Brenda and Maya and skip Frank and his house in the pines altogether. 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. And I liked it! While not a perfect story, there’s actually quite a bit of depth and I was so interested in where the story would go. I truly had no idea and just went along for the ride. Sometimes I think it’s more fun to be completely surprised by thrillers rather than guessing all the key reveals. What’s the Story About

The central mystery (well, there are two, the first one is whether Frank actually killed those two women, and if so how, and) what is the deal with the strange house in the woods that haunts her dreams, the House in the Pines of the title. 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. Reyes’ thriller, published Tuesday by Dutton, tells the story of a woman who believes that a friend’s death years before was the result of murder—and discovers that the friend’s boyfriend at the time has been linked to other mysterious deaths. Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer.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. 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. 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. THE HOUSE IN THE PINES focuses on Maya's grief and determination to find out the truth about her high school best friend Aubrey's death. Maya suffers from a lot of trauma after her best friend's death and she abuses Klonopin and alcohol to mask the grief. Her boyfriend Dan is supportive towards Maya's grief, but Maya knows that she needs to learn how to cope with these memories. When Maya visits her mother's house, years after Aubrey's death, she believes she can handle the emotional baggage her hometown once gave her. However, when clues to Aubrey's death in fact link her to her ex-boyfriend Frank, Maya has to find out the truth about what happened to her best friend. Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Never Here, The Herd, and The Lost Night

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. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. The House in the Pines is an excellent mystery/thriller that kept me intrigued from the beginning. What happened wasn’t what I’d expected, which is always a treat. The main character struggled with very real, relatable things in her life, which made her feel close the entire time. And her curiosity fed my curiosity. […] I also enjoyed the twist on present and past tense. In the present timeline the author wrote the book in past tense. In the past timeline the author wrote in the present. It was a very clever way to give an immediacy to the past (especially as the character began to recall events).” A fun debut novel! I liked this one a lot. The House in the Pines contains solid storytelling and an intriguing premise. 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.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. 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.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Dutton, and Ana Reyes for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 1.3!** Ana Reyes' debut is chilling, atmospheric, and addictive—a perfect thriller. I didn't want it to end.”

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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. 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. I want to thank the publisher "Penguin Group Dutton" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this novel and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone! 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.”