If you’re like me, when spooky season approaches, it’s time for horror movies and scary stories. Cooler weather, Halloween candy, and haunting tales that send your pulse skyrocketing? Yes, please! We Used to Live Here fit the bill perfectly, and it was exactly the right level of creepy to kick off my favorite time of year.
The book opens with Eve and Charlie, a young couple who flip houses. They just got a great deal on an old house way out in the woods; the views are lovely, but the place is really remote and needs a lot of work. One bitterly cold night there’s a knock at the door, and a family is asking to come in and look around. The father, Thomas, says he grew up in the house and wants to show his family his childhood home. Charlie isn’t home, and against her better judgement, Eve lets them in.
This one seemingly innocent request begins a nightmare for Eve as the family stays long past their welcome, finding reason after reason not to leave. While Eve has had some moments of fear while alone in the house before – the basement is particularly unnerving for her – she’s chalked it up to her anxiety. However, her unease goes into overdrive once the family arrives. Tensions mount, and things start to spiral out of control as the family appears to make themselves at home. Eve also glimpses strange, incomprehensible things around the house, and worst of all, Charlie goes missing. It’s as if Thomas’s presence has woken up something in the house, something malevolent.
Eve’s narrative is interspersed with found documents, such as a transcript of the home’s original real estate listing, classified ads, manuscripts, newspaper articles, police reports, forum posts, and more. Each document reveals an eerie new aspect of the home, the family, or the area. The careful reader will note that there is a Morse code clue included at the end of each record (string them all together for a warning) and take notice of another entry’s seemingly random typos.
This mysterious puzzle-box of a story is twisty and complex, more elaborate than an ordinary haunted house novel. Pick up We Used to Live Here for a fast-paced, plot-driven horror that will have you thinking about it long after you’ve finished it.
