Okay, so Frank is a librarian and possible psychic murderer who hits on high school girls. Have you read The House in the Pines and are completely lost and confused? Here is a character list, plot elements, the ending explained, and a Spoiler Discussion for The House in the Pines.
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She even almost agreed when Frank asked her to move in with him. However, the spell broke when she realized she was missing hours of memory. She left the cabin covered in dirt, unsure of how it got there, and a sense that something was terribly wrong. When she was 17, Maya was about to leave Pittsfield to study English at Boston University, dreaming of fulfilling her father Jairo’s hopes of becoming a writer. Maya’s mother Brenda met Jairo on a monthlong mission trip to Guatemala; however, Jairo was killed later that month after protesting the Guatemalan Civil War. After returning to the US, Brenda learned that she was pregnant.
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Brenda and Jairo fell in love and she got pregnant, but then he died, shot by the Guatemalan army. In any case, Maya is especially freaked out by the video because her best friend Aubrey also dropped dead for no apparent reason the summer before Maya went to college. It seems that now, parents are desperately wanting their children to be “unplugged” for a few weeks and take a much-needed break from screens and technology. Parents want to send their children to sleepaway camp so that their kids can enjoy being out in nature and socialize more in person without being on social media. Sleepaway camp — unlike at public and private schools — is one place for children where cell phones are not allowed.
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Seeking answers, she heads to her Berkshire hometown to relive that fateful summer — the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey. To save herself, Maya 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. However, her past returns 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 to finally solve the mystery of what happened to Aubrey.
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In my spoiler-free review of House in the Pines, I talk about how I am going with option A, and I think the book is really more a book about recovery from trauma than a thriller. Maya tells her mom that she’s afraid to tell Dan about her drug addiction. Maya’s mom is worried about her daughter going off the drugs, as she says benzo withdrawal makes people paranoid.
Category: Suspense & Thriller Women's Fiction
Maya goes to urgent care and gets a prescription for a different antidepressant. Frank admits he had to kill Aubrey because she figured out his game AFTER he gave her a book on hypnosis. He says he “gave Cristina what she wanted” which was to die on camera.
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Reyes is also half Guatemalan, like Maya, who knows what it’s like to be abruptly cut off from her heritage. Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller. I love your review even though you gave way too much ink to book that did not deserve it. I can’t believe I actually read 70% of this POS before giving up.
Things That Didn’t Make Sense to Me About House in the Pines
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. In the past, Maya goes to look for Frank at his parent’s house. His father is vague about where Frank is and Maya asks if he is at the cabin. Frank brought her there and said she was the only one he ever brought there.
This is a pet peeve of mine—it intrudes on the narrative and jolts the reader out of the story. Like that maybe her mom was in on it or was drugging her to keep her in hypnosis or something. I wish I had not wasted my time reading it and I am surprised it was on a popular bookclub reading list.
He asked her to defer college and live with him in the cabin forever. Main character Maya has insomnia and wonders how to get more Klonopin, which she’s been addicted to since the death of her best friend seven years ago. And, while many of the camp’s activities and traditions have remained the same for more than 80 years, all of the main buildings and cabins have been remodeled and upgraded over the years. Each cabin at Friendly Pines Camp now comes equipped with its own bathroom and shower.
I thought the author balanced both timelines well and it generally flowed nicely. But coping with her secret addiction and Klonopin withdrawal makes it difficult to trust her own mind. Even so, she dives headfirst into the trauma she tried to push away for so long, and she finally faces Frank—the strange boy with the cabin deep in the woods . I think this book could have been so interesting as a sort of magical realism/horror/trauma book but it never got there.
Maya gets off drugs and begins to work on finishing her father’s book. Apparently most people are NOT susceptible to hypnosis, but people with vivid imaginations (like artists and teenagers and, apparently, people who read a lot) are. Now Maya imagines she is with her father, who is typing his book.
She thought that Frank was a killer from the beginning and never changed her mind. The only thing that changed was that other people believed her. Yes, Aubrey and Christina are possibly victims of Frank, but Maya is his main victim.
In this captivating, eerie psychological thriller, Maya is haunted by gaps in her memories surrounding the death of her high school best friend nearly seven years ago. After watching a viral video of a young woman suddenly dying mysteriously in a diner, she’s desperate to put the pieces together. The House in the Pines (2023), a debut novel by Ana Reyes, is a psychological thriller that incorporates elements of magical realism and fairy tales. The novel began as Reyes’s MFA thesis at Louisiana State University; Reyes was inspired by her experience with Klonopin withdrawal and the mixed messages she received from various doctors. The novel also draws on Reyes’s cultural background—like her protagonist Maya, Reyes is part Guatemalan and grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
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