"As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.
As soon as the strangers enter their home, uncanny and inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?"
We Used to Live Here is a standalone horror/thriller novel by Marcus Kliewer.
To be honest, I can't remember why I picked up this book nor where I had first heard about it. The probable answer is that I saw it on TikTok since I spend way too much time on there to be honest...Nonetheless, I saw it and I decided to read it to moderate success. This book ended up being slightly above an average rating for me.
I get Eve on some level—I really do. The smart side of me (and the side that loves to listen to true crime) was screaming at her when she invited a family of strangers into her house while she was home alone. But, like Eve, I am also a people-pleaser who will cave into their demands out of sheer empathy. To be fair though I just wouldn't answer the door in the first place...but I digress.
Again, like Eve, I would be stuck in a horrible situation that would bother me just as much as it did having to read about it. There was something so uncomfortable about a family, who she graciously let stay over, slowly consuming her entire life. Not that uncomfortable though hence my rating. The more infuriating side of things also put me off a bit, like how, for example, even with a lesbian couple the author somehow managed to make one of them the cliche horror husband. I would have been there for a power couple but sadly that was not the case as Charlie was not nearly concerned enough about their situation.
Their situation isn't good, no doubt about that, but I found that everything they go through throughout the story ends up being impacted by the ending, or lack thereof. The author spends the time to build up the tension and the plot, only for there to be an open ending. I hate open endings. If the book is concluded then I need a conclusion, not whatever it was the author gave me. You can't just speed your way through the climax and abruptly end the story and expect me to enjoy the story as a whole.
This is partially why I didn't give it a higher rating, half because I was annoyed by Eve's situation and half because the story just stopped. Overall though, this was an okay story.
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