Our house is a suspenseful turn the page book. Fiona and Bram are having marital issues. When Fiona catches Bram in his infidelity things turn sour. Unknown to Fiona, Bram has secrets of his own that will change Fiona‘s life in a catastrophic way. I enjoyed reading this book.

At the time I requested this book I was very interested in it. Obviously, it has been a few years since I requested this and I am no longer interested in it. It doesn't match my current reading tastes and I apologize that I didn't read it and thank you for the kindness you showed offering it to me.

Lock your doors and brace yourself for a heart-pounding thriller that will leave you questioning everyone you know! In Our House, Fiona Lawson's life turns into a living nightmare when strangers claim her house as their own and her family goes missing. Gripping and full of twists, this book expertly weaves a web of lies and secrets, keeping you hooked until the jaw-dropping conclusion

I loved this book, I was hooked on the characters and felt sympathy for both of them. I was not a fan of the ending but that's me. I like them to be a little more cleaner but she left us with unanswered questions. Maybe that's exactly what she wanted to do because the rest of the story is well written. She really pulls you in believing one way only to change it up and before you know it you have sympathy again.

This is the first novel I’ve read by Louise Candlish and I would pick up something else by her. While the book fell flat for me in the middle, overall, I enjoyed it. The premise was interesting and not something I have read about before. It was just too long for this type of book and could have been 50-100 pages shorter in my opinion. However, I was hooked from the beginning and the ending delivered.

Since I have her new book, I went back and gave this book another try. I did enjoy it a bit more than the last time I tried and couldn't get through it. My main issue with this book is that it was just slow. I think the author spent too much time over explaining everything about the plot and story, rather than leaving it up to the reader. As a reader if a book has to be explained that much to me then the plot is too difficult. In the case with this book, I dont think the plot was too difficult, in fact I think it was a great plot. I don't think the level of detail that went into the story telling needed to be at the level it was, I think the reader could have figured out the ins and out of the story just fine without having to be painted every little detail. Overall the book was fair and I think the next book will be even better as the authors experience builds.

Imagine coming home and finding others moving into your house and no knowledge of where your family is. Louise Candlish does it again— I had chills as I turned the pages and locked my door! She nestles suspense into a suburban neighborhood, where you feel you know the residents better than those in your own. I highly recommend adding Our House to your must read as well as her other titles which include The Other Passenger and Those People to your must read thriller list!!

“Our House” is a stylish mystery thriller with a unique concept, and I enjoyed reading this book!

Firstly, I love how the author told the story. She writes the tale from the perspectives of the two leads, Fi and Bram, and it was a thrill to see the plot progress from their views. The author creatively tells Fi’s storyline through podcasts and Bram’s version through word documents. Moreover, the author also adds articles and user comments from people who are following the case. I loved the author’s approach towards narrating the story because I felt like I was part of a spectator community witnessing the events.

Also, there are quite a few twists and turns that you don’t expect. You don’t know who to trust because both Fi and Bram’s perspectives are so convincing. My feelings towards both of them changed over the course because I did not know who to trust. The author also ended the story with a shocking twist that I did not expect. Frankly, this book had the potential to be one of my all-time favorite reads.

However, I must confess that the story dragged quite a bit in the middle. While we witness a few exciting twists and turns, the story doesn’t progress but instead goes back and forth. The book is around four hundred pages, which I felt was unnecessary for the storyline. The author could have kept a few portions short and straightforward to avoid this.

Apart from that, I enjoyed reading “Our House” and thought it was a creative suspense thriller with a stylish way of storytelling.

I had a hard time reading this book. The premise of the book sounds wonderful. How would you feel coming home to find that a new family has moved in. And then, needing answers, not being able to find your estranged husband. It could be a great plot... but I found this story did not fulfill that plot.
The story really started to drag, it could have been shorter. I never connected with the characters or the way the story was told. I just wanted to get to the end to find out how it finished. Unfortunately, there was no surprise to ending. It was what I had expected. Overall, the book was okay.

Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book. My apologies for how long it took me to do so.

I have one way to describe Our House and that's

LONG.

Oh wait, one more: MEANDERING.

I was shocked at the length of this book, because nothing about the plot warranted a 400 page odyssey. I was constantly putting it down and picking it back up, thinking that eventually I would start to appreciate the characters (I didn't - Fiona is the definition of smug and privileged and Bram is a complete waste of everyone's time) or that the plot would begin to pick up (it did - in the last twenty pages or so).

The premise of this book is ridiculously good. You arrive home one day and find strangers moving into your house. A house that you love so much that you've resisted selling it, even though it's worth millions. A house you thought you'd leave to your children for them to raise their children, and so on. These strangers think you sold this house and that they have the right to be in it. You come to find that your husband has disappeared, and worse, so have your children...

This is the situation that Fiona Lawson finds herself in. Told through the gimmick of a podcast that focuses on letting victims of crime tell their stories (with seriously irritating "comments" from social media users... I get enough of that in every day life, thanks), the story unfolds extremely slowly - I won't reveal spoilers, because the last chapter is very good, and it ends on a banger note. But I could never figure out what Fiona saw in Bram, or why she was willing to forgive him so many times.

The trope of a meek and gullible woman who eventually takes the power back is an annoying one, because you end up spending a huge amount of time with someone that has the tenacity of a lettuce leaf, and you just want to shake them into becoming a flesh and blood person with even a scrap of guts or bravery. That's what happens here.

Fiona just wasn't worth my reading time, and Bram was the kind of man who should be consigned to the dumpster fire. In fact, I dearly wish he had been.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent domestic thriller where nothing is as it seems.

What happens when strangers move into your house and you can not find your husband and children.? Twists and turns that are unexpected make this a novel you can not put down.

Our House has a fantastic premise, started out really strong and had a decent ending, but the middle definitely should have been edited down a bit to remove all of the unnecessary repetition.

Those People is a book with a great premise, but not great execution. The characters grow from likeable to completely unlikeable, which is the opposite I want in my fiction, and it was a little slow at times.

3.5 stars. I was sucked into this story right off the bat, and aside from a little drag in the middle, it was a fast-paced read. I would have liked the ending to be different, but found it satisfying and twisty.

Our House is a psychological book. There seems to be the other shoe just hanging out of reach. The reader knows that something is going to happen, there is some crazy and wonderful twist just around the next page. Louise Candlish did an amazing job keeping the reader wondering but giving them enough clues to keep them guessing as to where the story is going.

The chapters are written by Fiona, the wife, in a podcast form and Bram, the husband, in a letter form. They were both easy to follow, easy to understand, and enlightening as to what each were thinking at the time. I liked that I could know what each person was thinking when something was going on. It was also interesting to see how they perceived different events affecting each other. Bram seemed to know Fiona very good but he had kept many many secrets from Fiona that caused her view of him to not be quite so true to character.

Our House is on my list of the best of 2018. I could not put the book down, I was intrigued from the beginning, and was excited by the ending. This is a book that I will recommend over and over again to anyone and everyone who says hmm…what should I read next? The answer is easy Our House by Louise Candlish.

Our House had lots of hype - awards, accolades, and anticipation. I was so excited to read the story of Fiona and Bram - a couple who have owned their home for years - who come home to find another family living in their home and claiming that the house is theirs. Bram is missing, and the couples' two children are missing. This is the making of a great suspenseful plot: Fiona has a mystery on her hands. The story, however, is so very drawn out and the suspense never quite builds. I wish that there was more consistency in the plot instead of emphasis on trivial and predictable plot points.

This is a generous three-star review. It's very tempting to give it 2 stars, but I digress... No. wait. I'm changing it to 2-stars. Yep.

Good things:
The concept of this book is absolutely intriguing. By the back cover alone I expected a great read out of this book. Even the first few pages truly captivate and start to immediately pull you in. The writing style itself is very approachable with well-crafted sentences that are easy to understand. However, I found quite a few problems with this book.

Bad things:
No mystery. With any mystery novel you expect, well... a mystery. In Our House there is very little mystery to be found. Everything is laid out for you fairly quickly by dual character perspectives. So much so that you're no longer wondering what is going on, because they already told you. The writing then explains the points they've already outlined and it quickly becomes repetitive and removes that familiar drive to finish that most mystery-connoisseurs crave.

I don't know about you, but I read fiction to escape boring, everyday drudgery not to search out more of it. I felt this book was too long for what it offered. Too many pages were filled with wordy fluff about planning children's birthday parties, cleaning house, and carpool arrangements. To put it frankly, I couldn't care less. Especially when it has little to do with actually propelling the story forward. Both this more negative feature and the lack of mystery made this "thriller" dreadfully boring for me to read. I didn't care to finish it, but by that point, I was already halfway done and carried on through. I want to be fair and say that there were two or three small twists that I didn't see coming, but they certainly weren't enough to make me excited about the read.

Characters are quite important to me as a reader and I'm always disappointed when secondary characters are so neglected, especially when they have a great deal to do with the story at hand. The concept of this book surrounds the custody of two children, but aside from their names, I know absolutely nothing about them. It was the same for every other secondary character in the book. I could not differentiate them because they were largely featureless. Even the two main characters were quite simplistic and I was quite frustrated by the black-and-white roles they were forced to play. The mother, a stereotypical suburban mom with no depths of character. The father, a stereotypical misogynist and serial cheater. It all feels a bit tired, doesn't it?

Finally, I'd like to note a somewhat unorthodox formatting feature of this book. The novel is told through two perspectives and two timelines and told in different formats; one is written as a transcript of a podcast interview, one is a word document, one is just standard narration. Usually, I like those sort of shifts which keep the novel moving forward, but I found, in this case, it was actually a detriment to the mystery aspect of the story.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this book and to be an early reader via NetGalley! However, I will not be writing a review for this title at this time, as my reading preferences have since changed somewhat. In the event that I decide to review the book in the future, I will make sure to purchase a copy for myself or borrow it from a library. Once again, thank you so much for providing me with early access to this title. I truly appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions or concerns.

Imagine coming home one day to find someone else moving in to your house. That is exactly what happens to Fi (short for Fiona) in Our House by Louise Candlish. Fi and her husband Bram are separated, but in the interest of their two young sons, they've set up an unusual arrangement known as Birds Nest custody. Basically, rather than the boys shuttling between the individual homes of their parents, the children stay in the family home and the parents take turns living with them in it- Fi during the week, Bram on the weekends. This works well until Fi arrives home to find all of her belongings missing and someone else's being moved in.

This book is told in three perspectives- as Fi discovers the strangers in her home, Fi telling the story from the beginning on a podcast called The Victim, and Bram telling his version of events in a word document to be sent after the fact. This storytelling was interesting, but also confusing at times because the reader has to keep straight what we know from Bram but that Fi doesn't yet know. A mystery and a thriller, the reader is compelled to keep reading to find out what the heck is going on, but there were many times I was frustrated with one character. I wanted to say, "Come on! You can get out of this by just coming clean and taking a small punishment." This book took me a little longer to read because I had to keep taking breaks from it. Maybe current events have me a little less tolerant of being on the edge of my seat- right now that's the only sitting I seem to do as it is- but I didn't feel as motivated to read as I usually do.

This was a very interesting book with a lot of compelling concepts that would be worthy of good discussion with your book club. The ending was especially thought-provoking. If you're up for a little thriller distraction, I think you'll really like this one.
Just be sure you know where your house keys are at all times!

Fiona comes home from a few days away to find a moving van in front of her house and strangers moving into her home. Where's her husband? Where are her kids? Where's all her furniture & household stuff? That's how this suspense filled story begins, and the twists and turns keep coming page after page.

Looking for the "next Gone Girl", this could be it. I could not put this book down! Although not quite the same gut-punch effect of Gone Girl, this one comes pretty close. There were only a few moments where I could see what was coming. Told in a combination of flash-backs, current day narrative, first person "podcast", and written confession, the narrative can sometimes be a bit confusing, but it is NEVER boring. From peaceful upwardly mobile, suburban London bliss to nightmare. A great read.