Pine by @FrancineElena

By Pamelascott
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.

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They are driving out for guising when they see her. 1

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(@TransworldBooks, 23 January 2020, ebook, 330 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)

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This has been on my TBR list for ages because I've heard so many good things about it. I was delighted when it became available at my library. It took a while to get into the book and I wasn't really sure where the story was going to go. I was frustrated at points as there seemed to be no clear story or plot to follow but the writing was gorgeous, and I loved the atmosphere and kept turning the pages. There's a lot going on and it's not always clear what everything means but stick with it and something amazing will happen. I loved the fact I had some many questions as I read. What really happened to Lauren's mother? Who is the strange woman that stumbled onto the road and where did she go? Where is Ann-Marie?