Maya has no idea the can of worms she opens will bring about more questions than answers and she must face that there were many things she can't remember about her relationship with Frank when she was a teenager and if she does confront him again it could be her life at stake this time and there won't be anyone there to save her.

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. Ana Reyes said of The House in the Pines, “The idea of home, though always important to the story, emerged as a theme in ways I hadn’t expected.”

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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.

How did Maya’s addiction impact her credibility, if at all? As the novel went on, did Maya’s credibility change for you? If so, what was the turning point? I’ve never read a mystery novel with a plot as intriguing and surprising as The House in the Pines. The novel’s characters were as fascinating as the situations they found themselves in. I couldn’t put it down.” 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. 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.Ana Reyes’s debut is chilling, atmospheric, and addictive—a perfect thriller. I didn’t want it to end.” Once Maya finally admits to Aubrey the truth behind her relationship with Frank, Aubrey surprises her. She's afraid of him too. Just as the two girls begin to make connections, on that very day, Aubrey ends up dead. Of course, if you are one of many readers who is OVER the pill-popping 'can we trust her' trope...you might want to avoid this. It only tends to annoy me on a case-by-case basis (and didn't here, although her habit was mentioned more than it needed to be) and I don't feel it detracted from the narrative too much, but if you are fed up with addicted protagonists, this won't be the book for you. 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. I really enjoyed the pace of this as well. I couldn't put it down once I started. While I found some reveals fairly predictable, if you've recently read Shea Ernshaw's A History of Wild Places, you may see it too, I still enjoyed the story a lot.

If you were Maya, would you have confronted Frank in the bar? Do you think it was worth the risk to her own safety? I felt the book is really about the relationship between Maya and Frank (a creepy older librarian who tries to get Maya to abandon her plans for college and live with him) and how their relationship casts a dark shadow over her life in the present. That aspect of it reminded me quite a bit of My Dark Vanessa, another book about abuse and trauma. And this is what I think The House in the Pines is really about.

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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. The book’s narrative structure is also erratic at times. The House in the Pines jumped from present to past to present without any markers to orient the reader. I could have really used a heading for each chapter with the date. on a positive note, i did eventually find myself somewhat invested in the story, but mostly because i hoped to be proved wrong with my suspicions. it was atmospheric and i enjoyed the scenes at the cabin (wish we would have gotten more of that). i also appreciate that the author went a little out of the box with the plot

Overall, this psychological thriller felt menacing and chilling at times. It also had suspense, interesting characters, and a thought-provoking story line. If you enjoy psychological thrillers with an unreliable narrator, then this may be the book for you. Additionally, her mother, who has years of experience as an EMT, may be just the person to help Maya through the painful withdrawal process.the book) suffers from doing way too much at the same time […] I really struggled with following this narrative, and the drinking/pill popping trope is so overused at this point. However, I do think there’s a reader/audience for this book. The synopsis is calling it “utterly unique” and I can see that because as the story develops after the halfway mark, it is indeed very different than I expected. Readers will either love or hate the ending, which will make for great book club discussions.” I didn’t enjoy this book but I still wanted to know what caused the deaths…I couldn’t find any spoilers so I had to finish the book. If you feel the same way, please accept this gift: it was hypnotism The main character just had all the issues.. everything. And we are meant to believe anything she said or did? And she wasn’t a nice person either. Nothing about her was likeable, she was a bit of a brat and I stopped caring about what was going to happen. The cabin in the woods doesn’t really play too much of a part in this book and doesn’t even appear until 60% 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).”