A review by violetturtledove
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Now I don't necessarily mean this as a bad thing, but you can see how this book started off on reddit. There are little 'breadcrumbs' of clues scattered throughout the book, and you could easily fall into a mess of red string and conspiracy theories trying to work it all out (at various points in the book I was looking up morse code and translating Norwegian). So it definitely draws you in if you like mysteries, but don't expect anything to make sense at the end. 

While the mysterious aspects and the clues (in the form of found documents scattered through the book) make this all feel very real and intricate (if unresolved), the characters seem to have come from a slasher film. They spilt up in the dark, they fall asleep immediately after horrifying incidents. 

The main character has an exposition-laden inner monologue; analysing everything that's happening and may be about to happen, focusing on very specific details and going over possible explanations for the mysterious happenings. She's also fooled by her partners fake 'hello...?' voicemail message (despite it being stated that she's had that message for the entire relationship) but then next time she calls she 'won't be fooled twice'. Oh and there's a link to a jolly chimp toy which feels quite forced. Now I do appreciate horror film parodies and references, so maybe this is intentional but it's hard to tell. 

Taking all this into account, I can't even decide if I like the book or not. It DID draw me in, I was intrigued and will be mulling over bits of it for some time. And some of the bad bits were sort of enjoyable in a 'trashy movie' way. But I didn't really care for the characters and the ending didn't explain enough. It had it's spooky moments but I suspect that's because I was reading in the dark and it reminded me of certain horror films/shows. It's definitely not a typical haunted house story, but I'm not sure it's successful at whatever it is either. That said, I'd probably read something else by this author (it is a first novel after all), and will probably check out the Netflix adaptation because I am curious to see what they do with it.