We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer - 4 stars

[Heather Reads Books]

This book got me, I have to admit.

We Used to Live Here is an effective piece of psychological horror. Couple Eve and Charlie flip houses for a living. Having jumped on an opportunity to renovate a large, isolated house in the Pacific Northwest, Eve seems to be having reservations about this big move. Then just a couple weeks after moving in, the doorbell rings. It's a man and his family, saying this was his childhood house. Could he please show his family around for fifteen minutes? Reluctantly, Eve agrees.

Things completely derail from there.

The slow descent into madness for Eve does feel like someone suffering a psychotic break. It is never truly clear what is happening or what is only going on inside Eve's head. One of the most unsettling marks of horror for me is when characters treat utterly batshit things happening as if they are normal, and this happens A LOT in this book, creeping me OUT. You can tell there's a lot of pastiche here: the author feels like a devoted lover of House of Leaves (aren't we all), and the bits about the missing sister maybe being held in a psych ward somewhere, yet perhaps affecting the reality in and around the house, reminded me, delightfully, of the Silent Hill video games. I also liked that the book was playing with the idea of what happened if the Mandela effect could be, essentially, weaponized.

I do think some things went a little over the top – the stuff with Mo dragged a bit and the revelation that neither the toy nor its company ever existed felt like a direct rip off of Candle Cove, a classic piece of internet horror that this book was probably conceived in. The inclusion of the "documents," another common trope of internet horror from the last decade or so (it even says this author was part of the No Sleep subreddit!) felt interesting in spots but a bit overwrought in others. I did like how at the end (view spoiler)[it is implied all of these "documents" are actually just Eve doing unhinged internet research while in the psych ward (hide spoiler)] but that doesn't really explain why their tone is so weirdly academic? I also thought Eve's narration sometimes dragged. It picked up near the end, but for a lot of the book every time another character said or did something, Eve would have extended paragraphs of internal reaction, which sort of bogged down the pace. It does even out over time, however.

I also really enjoyed (view spoiler)[ that you can never quite tell if everything is just in Eve/Emma's head. I actually think it makes the most sense that it was, and I liked the slow tilt of the reality of the book to start backing that up. I certainly never saw it coming that Eve would end up trapped in "Emma's" reality. The clincher for this came during the section of the documentary notes about Eve/Emma's interrogation with the aside "should we make a joke about millennials being able to afford a house like this?" because I had that EXACT problem with the beginning premise myself! The fact that the book came around full circle to this detail to shed doubt on its original set up was truly masterful. (hide spoiler)]

All in all, I did rather enjoy this book. I ended up listening to the audiobook and the performance was excellent, which helped enhance the general spooky ambience. Great way to set the mood for October.