Jannelies's Reviews > We Used to Live Here

Although I rated the book four stars, it took me a while after reading it to make up my mind. It is no doubt a very well-written story, with deliciously creepy settings and a sense of doom from page one on.

However, there are some things in it that made me decide not to rate this book the full five stars. To start with Eve. I cannot help it but I couldn’t find an ounce of sympathy for her. And Charlie? Charlie’s character stayed disturbingly flat for me throughout the whole story. I must admit, if Eve would have been a stronger character instead of the whiney girl she is, we wouldn’t have this story because she would never had admitted the family, let alone letting them keeping over her house and home.

There are long, slow scenes where Eve is running around in the house trying to accomplish something simple (like finding something) where she gets distracted every minute. The lights are never working and the flashlight gives out after a few minutes – all things we see time upon time in horror movies. Not very spectacular so to say. And when Eve seeks help from a neighbor, why doesn’t she say anything? Just sitting there and sipping tea won’t help.
But then, a second layer of the story presents itself and there is where its getting interesting! Suddenly the whole story isn’t set in the house so much as in Eve’s head. She can’t trust herself or anyone else around her anymore and the reader gets drawn into a frightening world where nothing is as it seems.

The combination of settings and atmosphere make this story a mix between old-fashioned horror and the very modern and much creepier world of psychological horror. And that’s why its such an interesting story that keeps you reading till the end.

I read about plans to make a movie out of this but that was ‘news’ from 2021 so I don’t know whether we will ever see it. And I certainly hope they won’t ruin it with just having Eve run around in the house.

Thanks to Atria and Edelweiss for this review copy.