The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes

The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes is a psychological thriller about Maya, an unreliable narrator coming off a klonopin dependency who is haunted by the unsolved mysterious death of her best friend, Aubrey. We meet Maya as she’s reeling from having seen an eerily similar death of another young woman in a you tube video. A video that includes footage of the same person who was present at her best friend’s death. A man named Frank. From there the reader embarks on a quest to find Frank and discover the truth through Maya’s circuitous, hazy, and sometimes alcohol induced confused state of mind.   

Unreliable narrators are hard for me, and Maya is most certainly one of these. I do believe that a lot of it was intentional because of her klonopin withdraw and the unusual psychological manipulation and for that intention Reyes did a brilliant job of creating delusion and confusion in the reader’s mind. However, I am a reader who dives in and wants to depend on and trust the narrator. I want to see what I’m reading clearly (even when I’m listening) and through the ever-changing kaleidoscope of the narrator I had a hard time doing that.