Another Haunted House Story

We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough

Goodreads Giveaway // Advanced Reading Copy

Pages: 287 Genre: horror mystery

Rating: 3 Star

Married couple Emily and Freddie are moving into Larkin Lodge, an old country house. After Emily's near death experience that left her in a coma, they're excited to get out of London. And it's a beautiful house, except Emily feels weird. Creaking floors, doors and windows that open and close on their own, books flying off the shelves — something is up, even if Freddie doesn't see it. Of course, Emily knows that her post-sepsis brain may be affecting how she's seeing everything. But she's beginning to believe the house is really haunted. Emily is determined to discover the secrets of the house, but she and Freddie have their secrets too.

This book was fine. It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. It reminded me a lot of The Haunting of Hill House (both the movie and the show), but not as good. The concepts in this book had some real potential, but I don't think the execution matched up to expectations.

Emily and Freddie were not intended to be perfect characters, and for the most part I'm on board with that. But Freddie was genuinely evil. The hatred he had for his wife was practically bleeding off the page. He was self-centered, vindictive, vaguely misogynistic, and just full of bitterness. And this is before any (spoiler free) horror stuff started happening! It was so aggressive that it took me out of the story completely, because it never felt intentional.

We also spent a little bit too much time in Emily's head. It's not that the plot wasn't moving forward, but it still seemed static. I'm trying not to spoil the book, but I think it's safe to say that it's pretty typical for things to take a downhill turn in a horror book. But I never really felt that downhill trajectory through her. If Terrible Husband Freddie was her biggest problem in this story, I feel like she could've been written largely the same. I wish we could've gotten more.

I actually liked the resolution. Granted, I'm a little bit scared of haunted houses as a baseline, which makes all haunted house books feel intense to me. But I thought this was an interesting and unique way to build a haunted house story. Again, though, the execution was lacking. There were far too many coincidences to feel believable. And I did not like the epilogue. It wasn't necessary, it made all the tension disappear instantly, and it completely changed the tone of the book. I think it would've been better to just end the book, or change the epilogue to something else.

Really, everything about this book was just Fine. It was interesting enough to read, especially once it picked up at the end. It might be better for readers who are just starting to get into horror books, but on its own it's nothing spectacular. It's fine.