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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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! 😉 I was really intrigued by this story. It pulled me in from the start. I enjoyed how Reyes structured the telling of the story. There are both past-and-present timelines, as you slowly piece together what happened between Maya, Frank and Aubrey that summer and how that has impacted Maya's life ever since.

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

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. I DEVOURED this book! Reyes’s prose is sensuous and transportive, threaded through with a sense of underlying dread. This remarkable debut confidently explores themes of storytelling, generational ties, complicated female friendships, and control.” 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 the past (?) or maybe it’s the present (?) Maya borrows her Mom’s car and sneaks out to Frank’s cabin at night. But she finds the cabin in ruins and Frank camping there. 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. My opinion: House in the Pines was kind of just a book about a creepy old librarian who gaslit a teenage girl, possibly abused her (did he sleep with her or just invade her mind?), and basically ruined her life by either killing her best friend (who was trying to get Maya to leave Frank) or convincing her that he did. So he’s either a murder and/or an abuser.

House in the Pines - Jen Ryland Spoiler Discussion for The House in the Pines - Jen Ryland

On the tape, Frank says “relax your heart” and Maya is convinced that Frank made Aubrey and Cristina’s hearts stop with his hypnosis. I was able to listen to a final version as well. Although the narrator was fine there was not a heads up when we were in the past, I like a heads up. Steven says that Christina left him a note saying she was going to go live with Frank in his cabin. He tells Maya not to go there.All in all, I think this is a good and entertaining thriller. There are uneven parts but it really does try to cover many different topics from friendships, mother/daughter relationships, jealousy, addiction and more. 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. Random Brenda POV: Brenda feels bad about sending her daughter to Dr. Barry after Aubrey died as that got her hooked on Klonopin. Also: Brenda sees that Maya was right: Frank is a murderer. 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. 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).”