Pines by Francine Toon: Book Review

Hello! Today I bring you a review for the new novel due out on January 23rd called Pine by Francine Toon.

I would like to thank Anne Carter and Francine Toon for allowing me to read and review.

Blurb

They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.

Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.

In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.

Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.

In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.

Review

Let’s just start with this cover shall we? I hate to admit it but I do judge book by it’s cover and this cover would have pulled me in without even reading the blurb. I love it’s simplicity.

Pine is a well written book which has elements of gothic fiction and thriller. It centres around young Lauren and her father and how they live with the disappearance of her mother.

I found that the book was really easy to read and flowed well without the pace becoming stagnant.

The end was something that I didn’t expect and a twist is always good.

I thoroughly enjoyed Pine and would recommend it anyone who enjoys the mystery and thriller genre.

You can purchase a copy for yourself on Amazon by clicking this link.

Thank you for reading.

Emma-Louise x