"You Shouldn't Be Here"

You Shouldn't Be Here by Lauren Thoman

Amazon First Reads July 2024

Pages: 396 Genre: mystery

Rating: 4 Star

Kindle Highlights

CW from Goodreads: You Shouldn’t Be Here contains depictions of narcissistic abuse and manipulation, assault, misogyny, discussion of school shootings, gun violence, murder, and death.

Sixteen-year-old Angie Stewart is hearing voices in her house. She says that it's a ghost, but only she can hear it, so most people don't believe her. She's working to investigate what's going on, despite having no help. Meanwhile, first-year teacher Madelyn Zhao just moved into her new house that is, most importantly, where her cousin disappeared from a few years ago. As these two strangers search separately for clues about the strange things happening in their small Pennsylvania town, they both begin to realize that things may be bigger than they expected.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It certainly wasn't perfect, but I thought the characters and the story worked well to create a pleasant and exciting reading experience. Unfortunately, I don't think it worked well as a mystery — a thriller, sure, but it was very obvious from the start what was going on.

The dual-POV was cool and generally well-executed. Angie and Madelyn both held their own as main characters, who were competent and complex. They carried their stories well. The side characters weren't as good, admittedly. I liked them, but outside of the main characters, but they felt significantly more flat. Their decisions and quirks felt like they were decided on based on what the main characters needed, not what the side characters would Actually do.

In the two stories, though, Madelyn's was a lot stronger. In fact, I'd argue it was the main plot. Angie's story and the paranormal aspects of the grander narrative did not hold up well. Everything "supernatural" that happened felt entirely random and out-of-place from everything else going on, and it never came to a satisfying conclusion.

Otherwise, I thought the plot was done pretty well. Plot twists had details planted wisely (in hindsight they seemed obvious, though, so I'm not sure if I was just really tired while reading or not). And I did enjoy the overall mystery of it all, despite its imperfections. I was always excited to see what was going to happen next.

My biggest complaint was the messaging in the book. A lot of the time it was way too overt. I agree with its Leftist or anti-landlord/Republican points, but sometimes it felt preachy. As if the book was going out of its way to insert plot points so it could tell me why something is good or bad instead of just letting the story speak for itself. Additionally, the bad characters were so aggressively evil that it started to get a little ridiculous. Most people aren't exclusively evil or good — people with horrendous views will still have isolated moments of generosity or kindness, and I think the book would've benefitted from showing that.

Overall, as far as Amazon First Reads picks go, this book was really good. Even moments when there were some glaring issues, I was having a good time.