Tartan Gothic.

Lauren and her father, Niall, live in a close-knit village in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by a pine forest. Driving through the wood one Halloween, a woman stumbles into the road. They give her a bed for the night, but in the morning she’s gone and only Lauren remembers the woman was ever there at all.

Toon artfully misdirects the reader and piles on the menace, whether it is supernatural, a possible serial killer, or a schoolgirl bully. Her keen eye for detail grounds the reader in the scene.

Eerily atmospheric.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers., for the ARC.

Wow! This book just came out of nowhere and totally swept me away in its five-star tidal wave. What a journey! If I had to describe PINE in one word only, it would be “unsettling”. It didn’t help that I innocently started reading it in the evening, and ended up putting in an almost all-nighter to get to the end, followed by some pretty strange nightmares – which you will totally understand once you read this book for yourself.

Talk about creepy! From its atmospheric, rural Northern Scotland setting to its characters and the supernatural events (or are they?) that ethereally drift in and out of misty forest roads, the story had me on edge the whole time. What I loved most about this book, and which deserves a whopping five stars from anyone looking for a spooky read, is that it achieves this seemingly without trying. This isn’t the contrived, try-hard ghost story you so often come across when looking for a haunting read. I’m not sure how Toon does it, but every single, innocent word on her pages was infused with a gentle but unmistakeable sense of menace and danger. The most unsettling scenes wouldn’t withstand translation if I tried to tell them to you, as they are built on fleeting impressions and seemingly innocent happenings, like the dripping of water, shadows on the wall, voices in the dark. It took my breath away!

Let’s also talk about Lauren, the eleven-or-so year old main protagonist. I’ve read quite a few books this year featuring young adult characters, but Lauren is in a league of her own. Rarely has a young girl touched my heart this way, and I felt that Toon managed to capture the very essence of this child who is still grieving for a mother she has never known, a mother who has disappeared but is still very much part of her life, in a way no mother ever should. Lauren’s story unfolded almost dream-like, wandering through a landscape where nothing is quite as it seems, and nothing can be taken for granted. Is it in her mind, or is it real? That shadow place between childhood innocence and adulthood is so well captured here, as Lauren’s magical childhood mind collides with her developing adult logic. Some scenes were simply so unsettling (this word again) that I caught myself holding my breath. One particular scene in an abandoned house in the forest had me slam the book shut in shock and fear and make a hot cup of tea to get my courage back before I could continue reading. It was definitely a “keep all the lights on” type of read! This book haunted me from page 1, and I think it won’t leave my mind easily now even after I have finished reading.

So let’s just cut to the chase: if you are looking for a haunting, Gothic novel with an eerie, claustrophobic setting and characters that worm their way into your mind (and dreams), then this book should definitely be on your radar. Prepare to be emotionally wrung out. Caution when reading it at night, because it brought up some pretty strange dreams for this particular reader! It’s one of the best spooky mysteries I have ever read, and thankfully lacks all the things I normally dread finding in this particular tricky genre. Francine Toon has gifted us with a stunning debut novel that deserves to take the world by storm. I loved everything about it!

Reading this on Halloween week made it all the more creepy! A ghostly, atmospheric Scottish tale. Beautifully written.

10-year-old Lauren lives with her dad, Niall, in a small Scottish town. Her mother Christine disappeared some years ago. Right from the start we are plunged into an intriguing, eerie mystery: a young woman keeps appearing around Strath Horne, sometimes merely glimpsed and sometimes having extended interactions with others, yet only Lauren seems able to remember her. She slips from the others' minds as soon as she is out of sight, even if they're mid-conversation.

Part of what made Pine so beguiling to me was the opening chapter. Lauren and her friend Billy are meeting up to go trick-or-treating or, as it's called here, guising. Lauren is wearing her mother's lipstick; she's just, vaguely, half-consciously, beginning to understand that there are things about Billy she finds attractive. Dressed in makeshift Halloween costumes, the two children traipse from house to house, visiting neighbours they've known all their lives, performing 'party tricks' (Billy tells a joke and Lauren sings 'Bat Out of Hell'). This first chapter establishes everything important about the story: the way Lauren sees the world, the relationship between her family and the community, a backdrop that interweaves small-town cosiness with the chill of the unknown.

Lauren is such a pitch-perfect character. Her preoccupations ring so true, the way she pores over Christine's book of magic but, when she's scared, just wants to listen to the Frozen soundtrack; the sense of looming metamorphosis about her admiration of older girls and newly precarious friendship with Billy. Teens and adults react to her in authentic ways as well – I'm thinking particularly of her tarot card readings for Diane and Ann-Marie, the way their responses strike both indulgent and careless notes, the sense they'll forget her predictions as soon as they leave the room. Toon is great at this in general – sketching the transience, the shifting nature, of exchanges (of words/thoughts/emotions) as they happen.

I haven't written much about the plot because it isn't what mattered to me most. It's definitely compelling, but I wouldn't have minded if it wasn't. I just wanted to soak up the mood and the small perfect details.

I loved Pine. I know this is a worn-out compliment, but I mean it: it is hard to believe that this is a debut novel. I was simply bowled over by the richness of its world – characters and setting both. The hush of the forest; the glow of a Himalayan salt lamp against pine-panelled walls; condensation trickling down the windows of a school bus, words scratched on the seats; a pale figure slipping between the trees. These are images and feelings that will stay with me.

This creeped me out and then some! All good but boy am I going to avoid any woods for a while. Francine Toon I applaud your sense of setting and creating such a wickedlygothic and downright chilling literary landscape!

The novel opens and it's Halloween night. Lauren and her father have been out “guising”, and are on their way home when they come across a strange woman dressed in white standing in the middle of the road. She seems confused. Injured? So, they take her home with them, but the next day, she's gone and what's weirder still is that her father can't even remember seeing the woman at all.

Oh and that's just the start. It gets more unsettling, creepy and claustrophobic. The supernatural and spiritual overtones are goose-bump inducing. The story harks back to when Lauren's mother went missing, her father is suspected due to his angry nature and alcohol issues and she is deemed to be a witch.. Turns out her mother was in to tarot reading and crystals...

Francine Toon was raised in the Highlands and it shows for the atmosphere in the novel is gothic, creepy and down right scary. It's not just the forest she describes but the essence of it - the trees and their shadows, the noises, the air, and oh those noises again.

The novel’s title refers both to Christine’s name for her daughter (Oren, the Gaelic word for “pine”) and to the forest which smoothers the village.in its grasp.

The setting is one of a Grimm's fairy tale. There is a sense of witchery, other worldly beings and a deep, increasing sense of unease.

Francine Toon’s eerie and unsettling debut novel Pine is set in a small and remote Highland town, where the nearest supermarket is 23 miles away, and the planned opening of an Aldi has been a topic for discussion for months. It is a community where everybody knows everybody else. So, it’s quite ironic that there’s a mystery at the heart of this story. Just under ten years before the events described in the novel, a young woman named Christine disappeared without a trace. Her partner Niall and their baby Lauren are still struggling to come to terms with this. The villagers gossip about Niall’s possible involvement in this disappearance, their suspicions fuelled by his alcohol problem and evident anger management issues. Lauren, who doesn’t remember her mother, is bullied at school, branded as the daughter of a “witch”. Christine might well have recognised herself as one – before her disappearance, she was into alternative remedies, crystal healing and fortune telling. In secret, Lauren is teaching herself spells and tarot reading from one of her mother’s books - her way of coping with a harsh and dangerous world.

The novel opens on a Halloween night. On their way home in their truck after an evening out “guising”, Lauren and her father come across a strange, white-gowned woman stumbling onto the road. They take her home with them, but the following morning she’s gone, and Lauren notices that Niall seems to have no recollection of the event. Other ghostly and unexplained events take place. Could they be harbingers of an impending tragedy? The disappearance of teenager Ann-Marie unearths memories of a mystery which has never gone away and Lauren – and the whole village – fear the worst.

Francine Toon was raised in the Highlands, and she ably uses a setting familiar to her to create a dark, uncanny atmosphere. The novel’s title refers both to Christine’s name for her daughter (Oren, the Gaelic word for “pine”) and to the forest which surrounds the village. As in traditional fairy tales, the “trees, coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men” evoke dread but also a sense of something timeless and otherworldly. This idea is also visually conveyed in the brilliant, minimalist cover.

The reference to folklore, the Highland setting and the supernatural elements reminded me of another debut novel which I had greatly enjoyed – Kerry Andrew’s Swansong. However, there are also some clear differences between the approach of the two authors. Whereas Andrew’s story is steeped in folklore, Toon’s is darker, its Wiccan elements pushing it more towards horror. It also owes much to the contemporary thriller, which has turned the “missing person” trope into a veritable sub-genre.

The result is a gripping, genre-bending book which provides plenty of thrills, supernatural and otherwise. Indeed, in the excitement of the story it’s easy to miss its subtle, realist aspects – particularly the challenges of living in a small, remote community especially if you are a young teenager raring to see the world. This novel should also be read for this.

For her debut novel Francine Toon has demonstrated her writing skills and imagination to produce a chilling tale that blends harsh reality with the supernatural. She has also used her past experience of living in the Scottish Highlands to accurately portray and create a community with its two pubs and one convenience store where suspicion and gossip are pre-eminent. This is a creepy tale and has elements of the psychological thriller but at the same time veers towards the supernatural.

The story begins appropriately on Halloween night when ten year old Lauren and her father Niall while driving in his truck encounter and take home a strange white gowned woman stumbling by the roadside. The next day when the woman has gone Niall denies all knowledge of the incident. Who is this woman and did she even exist? Ten years previously Lauren’s mother who appeared to have psychic and knowing powers disappeared without trace, now Lauren begins her search for answers.

Against the background of the onset of winter in a foreboding landscape with its isolated and claustrophobic human settlement on its edge the story unfolds with an unsettling and disturbing intensity. This is certainly something a little different from the normal fare and can be viewed as an intelligent reworking of the modern Gothic genre.

I seem to be on a run of unsettling, beautifully written novels at the moment, Pine is incredibly moving, intensely unnerving and genuinely absorbing from first page to last.

The edgy, offbeat prose really digs deep, it is a disjointed, haunting tale that is at turns terrifying and heart wrenching. Lauren sits at the centre of a maelstrom of adult emotion, her connection to her missing mother tennous and spiritual – meanwhile danger lurks in the forest surrounding her while her father falls apart and the community grows stranger and more off kilter by the moment.

The setting is both beautiful and relentlessly claustrophobic, the author paints pictures with words and leaves the reader unbalanced yet fully immersed, it is a peculiar talent that held me in its thrall the entirety of the read.

The ending when it arrives is pitch perfect and emotionally raw – Francine Toon has managed to write a genre crossing novel with wonderfully gothic undertones, written in a freshly observant way and I loved every minute of it. Even as it gave me strange surreal dreams that I didn’t manage to throw off for hours I was still desperate to pick it up again at every given opportunity.

Brilliant. Different. Highly Recommended.