The House in the Pines – Book Review

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed….

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.

Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking 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. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer–the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.

At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin….

Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.

I don’t understand why Reese Witherspoon chose this book for the book club. I mean I have read most of the books that were recommended by Reese’s Book Club but this book…I don’t understand.

Maya was a high school kid when her best friend Audrey dies in front of her and a man named Frank. Maya believes that Frank has something to do with Audrey’s death although her own mother and no one believes her and Maya then goes for psychiatric treatment and gets addicted to a drug that helps her to sleep and forget about Frank. Now seven years later, Maya comes across a video where a woman mysteriously falls to her death and to her shock and horror, she finds that the woman was with Frank. Determined to stop Frank from killing more people, she returns back to her hometown and starts dealing with the demons in her past.

Here’s the thing–this book has a great premise and story. For ones who prefer slow burn thriller over fast-paced thrillers, then this book is great. No twists or turns it’s like, you kind of expected what is going to happen in the end. However, I found more flaws to the book than good ones.

First of all, the story is derailed from the main plot–for example in one chapter, you are talking about a possibility of Frank be a murderer and in the next chapter, you have about two chapters about Guatemala and Maya’s visit to her father’s country where her father was killed during the civil war and I as a reader felt this was a complete unnecessary part of the story. Is the author trying to showcase Maya’s grief? I wasn’t exactly sure. This actually ruined the story over all as a whole.

Maya is a very unreliable character. Now it can be a good thing in psychological thriller, but it can be also a bad thing. Even as a reader, I thought Maya was delusional at some points. Besides, the form of killing? I am not going to disclose too much but I felt like this was all very unrealistic.

Would I recommend this book? I don’t think so. However, the author has a good writing style so I would give a plus sign for that. Overall, this book worth 2.5 stars.