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About The Book 📚

Title: We Used To Live Here

Author: Marcus Kliewer

Publication Date: June 2024

Publisher: Atria

Genre: Locked Room Mystery, Horror, LGBTQ+

Pages: 320

Geographical Setting: Oregon, United States

Click Here for Content Warnings (may contain spoilers)

Three Words That Describe This Book: mysterious, dark, tense

About The Author

“Marcus Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator. His debut novel We Used to Live Here began life as a serialized short story on Reddit, where it won the Scariest Story of 2021 award on the NoSleep forum (eighteen million members). Film rights were snapped up by Netflix, and it acquired by Simon & Schuster for publication even before it had been extended into a full-length novel. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Follow him on Instagram @marcus_kliewer for exclusive book updates / writing things / stop motion animation & a lot of pet videos.”

Other Books by This Author

The Caretaker (2026) I have an advance copy for this one. I should have a review posted on this blog in March or April for The Caretaker.

My Review

› Described as Get Out meets Parasite, We Used To Live Here has been picked up by Netflix for an adaptation, with Blake Lively set to star and produce it. I’m not a fan of her work, so I probably won’t be watching that. The book is great though! I love how the cover gives the vibe that not everything is normal with this house. If you like to overanalyze, then this is the book for you. I don’t think anyone except the author, Marcus Kliewer, knows what really happened. This book started as a short story on Reddit.

› First Line: “They’d rung the doorbell unannounced on a chilly Friday night.”

› House # 3709 is an isolated house on a remote road in Oregon. The main character is Eve. She suffers from anxiety and has an imaginary talking monkey named Mo that talks to her in her head. Eve and her girlfriend, Charlie, have bought the house so they can flip it. They also have a dog named Shylo. A family of five shows up at the house.

“It was a family of five, middle-class, wrapped in sturdy winter jackets.”

The father, Thomas, said he used to live here. He asks if they can come inside and have a look around. Eve has a hard time saying no to anyone, and Charlie isn’t home. She pretends to call Charlie and tells the family that Charlie said no. The little girl, Jenny, gives a puppy face and Eve caves and tells them they can have 15 minutes.

Quotes That Stuck With Me

“Of course, a well-adjusted individual would’ve simply told him no. But self-destructive people-pleasing was another of Eve’s plentiful idiosyncrasies. She had a crippling fear of disappointing anyone, even complete strangers—even people she disliked.”

“Somehow, she felt responsible for the whole ordeal—her default reaction to most conflict. Even when the event was completely out of her control, even when the other party was blatantly overstepping her bounds, she always found a way to blame herself. Always felt this nagging sense of guilt for everything, as if her very existence was a violation of some stone-etched decree.”

› We Used To Live Here has well-developed characters and interesting side characters. The house itself feels like a character. The setting, descriptions and world-building are so well done. I liked the property listings, Wikipedia pages, newspaper clippings, online forums, and police reports that were included throughout the book. There is even a Morse code with a secret message. The writing has high readability. I don’t often get creeped out reading horror, but this one got me. The plot moved at a good pace, and I didn’t want to put it down. I really wanted to know what was happening. Overall, I had such a good time.

APPEAL FACTORS
Storyline: action-packed, character-driven, intricately plotted, open-ended, unconventional, tragic
Pace: fast
Tone: angsty, heartwrenching, mystical, suspenseful, thought-provoking, dark, mysterious, sinister, creepy, haunting
Writing Style: conversational, engaging, richly detailed
Character: awkward, complex, flawed, likeable, well-developed, diverse
Disability representation: mental illness
LGBTQIA+ Representation: lesbian

Read Alikes:
House of Leaves
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

› In the past, I have given a rating out of ten and converted that to a star rating, but I’m no longer giving a star rating here on my blog. I will continue to do that on Goodreads and The Story Graph.

› Final Thoughts
• We Used To Live Here is an atmospheric horror debut that will leave you questioning reality. I often read horror before bed and have no trouble sleeping. But this book creeped me out, and I chose another book to read. If you’ve already read this book and want to know more, check out the Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/.

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