2023 Book Review #41: The House in the Pines

 

I just finished this novel tonight while sitting out by the bonfire.  WOW was it ever fast-paced and very compelling of a plot. It's the author's first (debut) novel. It was on the "new books" shelf at my towne library. 

STORY SUMMARY

Maya was only 17 and a senior in high school, living in Pittsfield, MA with her mother Brenda, when her very best friend Aubrey just mysteriously dropped dead right in front of her and a young man named Frank Bellamy. Frank was a guy that Maya had been spending a lot of time with that summer. She had met him in the library where she liked to go and read and get cool in their air-conditioned building. 

Maya's dad died before she was even born but he left behind a manuscript of a fairy tale type story he was writing.  It was all in Spanish as he was from Guatemala. Brenda had met Jairo when she was down there on a church missions project. Maya spent her summer translating the book. 

Seven years after graduating from high school in Pittsfield, and attending Boston University, Maya is now living with her boyfriend Dan and working at a garden center in Boston. Dan is a grad student getting a law degree. He is a very loving person but he doesn't know that Maya is trying to kick her addiction to painkillers and alcohol.  She was prescribed the medicine as a way to cope with the pain of watching her best friend die.....along with other traumatic things that happened that summer. There are gaps in her memories and there is lost time that she just cannot account for. 

But...her past comes rushing back to her after she sees a YouTube video that shows a young woman (who looks uncannily like Maya) keel over and die in a diner across from a man.  That man?  Frank Bellamy! Plunged back into the trauma that has shaped Maya's young adult life, she decides to go back to the Berkshires where she is from to relive that fateful summer and try to figure out what really happened to her and Aubrey. Frank used to have a lot of influence over Maya and he had an obsessive jealousy that almost destroyed her friendship with Aubrey. 

Once she's back at her mother's house, Maya begins to dig out fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her father's book that never stood out to her  earlier when she was 17. To save herself, she will need to understand a story that was written before she was born....but time keeps running out.....and soon...all roads lead back to Frank's cabin...the cabin in the woods. 

MY THOUGHTS

This story at first started to read like a fairy tale.  At least that's the way I thought it was going to go.  However, it  soon became apparent that the Frank character along with his father had some way of having "power" over the people they met. 

At first I thought it was going to be about Frank putting some kind of illegal drug in Maya's food or drink.  Then I started thinking on a more psychological level and although I didn't guess the cause correctly, I was close. 

This book has good character development and a great plot.  There's some weird plot twists but that's what kept the book going.....I honestly read this book in just a couple of days because it was so fast-paced!

This book has several things that could be "triggers" for some people who might be emotionally fragile:  prescription drugs and their overuse; alcoholism; single parenthood; death of a teenager; murder; manipulation; memory issues; controlling personalities; emotional abuse; psychological abuse.  

This is not a "whodunit" type of mystery.  Rather, it is a how and a why kind of plot.  The how in my opinion was a bit far-fetched but...it's fiction!! So you do need to use your imagination and who knows? Maybe this method of bad psychology does make people act that way.  I don't want to reveal too much as I don't want to spoil the plot for you. The why is just downright sad.  I never felt sorry for Frank though as he was a grown adult when the deaths were occuring.  I did have some moments where I felt sorry for his mother and him when he was recounting his childhood. 

Pittsfield MA is a real place and only about 40 minutes to the east of where I live so that was cool to read about. The author did a great job describing this little city.  And of course we go to Boston often so that was fun to read about. Most of the book, however, is set in Pittsfield/the Berkshires. Also, Lake Onota really does exist in Pittsfield.  There also really is the Housatonic River and yes, GE the company did pollute the bodies of water in that area. 

There was only one editing error that I found. 

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to some mature content).

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.