Book Review: The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

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The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

Synopsis.

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.

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The Review.

THE HOUSE IN THE PINES Ana Reyes I passed up adding this book to my list of books to read in January and I should have left it that way. But persuaded by Reese Witherspoon’s declarative words and enticing personal recommendation I reconsidered. Lesson learned…know when you’re being sold. THE HOUSE IN THE PINES stars Maya. Maya struggles with an addiction that not everyone is aware of including Maya herself. One evening struggling to fall asleep she comes across a macabre video, coincidentally from her hometown, in which a woman falls dead next to a man she recognizes immediately. A man named Frank. Maya knows Frank from the summer after high school. The summer that ended in the death of her best friend. Maya knows there is a connection between the deaths of the two women and Frank. She goes back home to confront her past and solve the mystery of the connection. There are quite a few problems with this book. I listened to the audiobook version of the book and the narrator’s performance contributed to my dissatisfaction. The writing is choppy and basic, and the narrator’s performance is stilted, combined left for a bad reading experience. There are no extra words provided for enjoyment or depth, much is there for information only. The author repeats concepts and lays obvious groundwork for future development that gets completely disregarded at the end, so you’re left wondering what the point of bringing it up was. The author worked extremely hard at building a case for the main character to have a mental illness and also have an extensive history of substance abuse and misuse, wraps it into the story, and then does not resolve it in a good way. It’s left open along with a lot of other things in a very rushed and unsatisfying ending with little to no resolution. In addition, the entire PROBLEM the main character has been trying to solve the entirety of the book goes unresolved and I can’t believe I was left with that ending. Ridiculous! There is an aspect to the point-of-view perspective that should be noted in this book. The author moves in one perspective from one timeline to another without telling you which timeline you are in. Because there are similar characters in multiple timelines this was extremely confusing for no reason. I’ve seen this method before but perhaps done more effectively. If done well it limits the unnecessary labeling of timelines and lets you stay in the story. In this case each time you are transitioning to a new timeframe it takes wasted time (frustrating time) to establish which timeframe you are in. I gave this one two stars. Very disappointing Thanks to Libro.fm for the advanced ALC in exchange for an honest review! THE HOUSE IN THE PINES…⭐️⭐️