The House in the Pines

Okay, I was not aware this was a Reese's Book Club pick, but I stumbled across this book the same way I always come across new books: casually walking through the book aisles of Target, looking for something to distract me adequately while my 7-year-old looks and plays with the dinosaur toys to his heart's content. Of course, all in the hopes of killing time.

What drew me to this book was not the colorful and creative cover image, or the blurb on the back cover, detailing a story of a woman trying to investigate what really happened to her best friend all those years ago, but it was the opening preface. The descriptive nature of a cabin materializing from nothing, detail for detail, where it was easy to visualize the walls, the rooms, the doors. I find I have a very vivid imagination, and when I'm given a description of something, I don't just visualize it, but my mind conjures up elements to engage all of my senses.

I could practically hear the water of the creek running over smooth stones, the gentle breeze rustling in the grass. I smelt the soft, delicious aroma of stew cooking on the stovetop, feel the warmth of the cabin from the fireplace, and taste the food being described in those first couple pages.

All while standing in a Target toy aisle, surrounded by noises and bright lights and screeching kids.

I was sucked in immediately. And it was an instant purchase.

If only I had enough time to finish the book there in the store before bringing it home. And there's a number of different reasons why.

Needless to say I'm a sucker for psychological thrillers, books that could pull me in and get me thinking, start looking for clues and pieces that would unravel before my eyes, create complex characters, and generate a compelling conflict that would leave a lasting impression on my mind for years to come. I do not like detective mysteries, they don't interest me (because most of the time, the killer is almost always related to the detective or the spouse of the victim, a little too predictable for my taste). So it was a nice breath of fresh air to see the protagonist trying to solve this mysterious murder was your normal, everyday, flawed human being.

And boy, is Maya flawed. Suffering from psychological instability, drug withdrawals, hazy memories, Demons haunting her own mind and a sense of survivor's guilt that was consuming her life not just on a surface level, but subconscious level. For many years.

She's convinced her friend, Aubrey, didn't die of natural causes, but it is hard to convince other people when a relatively normal, healthy young girl just suddenly drops dead with no explanation, and your family just happens to have a history of mental illness.

Maya has resolved herself to her own personal suffering, her own trauma, and she's left to finding answers to unspoken questions at the bottom of a gin shot glass or prescription pill bottle. These addictive, self-destructive habits are dismantling her life, putting her career, personal life, and sanity on a razor sharp edge.

Then, after seven years, she watches a viral YouTube video of a young painter, Cristina, dropping dead in a restaurant, in the presence of none other than Frank, a man Maya dated in her small town around the time Aubrey died. This ignites Maya's obsession to figure out what happened, to Aubrey, to Cristina, and hopefully save it from happening to another girl. She returns to her hometown, confronting her past, her secrets, her memories, and that cabin in the woods where everything started.

The plot, the protagonist, the descriptive language, and the pacing of it all was well worth the read. The utilization of the past and present together felt like I was watching things happen within a movie. The last time I watched someone utilize these two different timelines in such a fluid, seamless way was the horror movie Occulus (and despite what some would save of the movie, it is one of my favorites for this very reason). It gave the opportunity to get to know the girls, bond with them, and relate to them on so many levels. Maya and Aubrey could very easily have been my own friends in high school, the type of well-rounded characters that spoke to a deep need in my core.

Then there was the pleasant surprise of incorporating Guatemalan heritage, a mysterious book of her father that served as a catalyst for bringing our antagonist Frank into the picture, and eventually as the conflict progressed, a pivotal part to resolving it. The folklore serves a purpose in dropping hints, and perhaps one of my favorite scenes in the entire book was what I would call the "connecting of the dots." I could feel through the pages that "aha!" moment, that eureka feeling of when a realization hits you like a wrecking ball and it all makes sense.

And that, perhaps, was the final moment in the book that I felt connected. As the last third of it began to come together, it felt like all of the key points were lost and became vague. The revelation came, how it all happened, the answer to this seven-year-long mystery of how these girls died and what part Maya has in it all and what Frank did... fell short of anticlimactic. If anything, it felt unbelievable, and not in a good way.

I went from being invested to being detached and disassociated. From some deep crevice in the back of my mind, Johnny Depp's voice echoed to the surface, a quote from that disaster of a movie, "Secret Window": "the only thing that matters is the ending; it's the most important part of the story, the ending."

That's what happened here. A thrilling story, a compelling idea, believable protagonist, relatable characters, the fast pace, the descriptive language. Only for it all to fizzle out in a less than satisfactory conclusion that left me with a puzzled look on my face, wondering if I was really reading the same book.

For this reason, I rate the book at 3.5 Stars. The fresh, powerful new idea, the writing, all of it was wonderful and outmatched what many in the genres do. But that ending... it would have been 4 Stars if the ending were different.