After weeks in a coma, Thiago's wife, Vera, died from injuries sustained in very public and politically charged incident at a local Metra station. Thiago's naturally having trouble managing his grief, though the odd behavior of his Alexa-like Itza certainly isn't helping, as the last thing Thiago needs is a device randomly ordering things to his house and reminding him of his late wife.

Full of grief, anger, confusion, and technological horror, This Thing Between Us is propulsive and does not let up. It took me very little time to read this book, and I imagine it'll be haunting me for quite some time to come.

Brilliant, heartbreaking, hallucinatory, and so, so creepy. This one'll stick with me for a long time.

Diverse cross-cultural contemporary literary horror, reaching back into history and Folklore of Mexico, ancestral dysfunction, patriarchy, and the wellsprings of paralyzing grief.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The blurb for this title makes it sound like the Tale of the Haunted Alexa, but this is a meditation on grief and solitude and trying to survive the loss of a love. Finding where you fit is never easy, but for Thiago it's worse. Beyond that, he has apartment problems, to put it mildly, and then cabin problems after that. This is a beautiful, haunting, crushingly lonely work, aching and cathartic, with a strong narrator and cosmic horror elements. Reads well alongside John Langan and Laird Barron. All the stars.

I was expecting more of a techno-horror thriller but instead got a Pet Sematary/The Thing sort of mishmash and it didn't quite work.

Another FSG oddity. What’s going on? Yes, this horror/gothic was compelling its way, but literary? I don’t think so. Nor did it deliver on the Latino theme it raised. So a spooky but partly predictable run around the usual points of haunting, resurrection and either submission or triumph. Gory, committed but more derivative than original.

Not always does a book perfectly embody a fixed emotion, especially one as complicated as grief. Gus Moreno’s latest novel This Thing Between Us depicts loss with such rawness and genuinity, it emits off the page.

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno begins with Thiago Alvarez mourning the tragic death of his wife Vera. His narrative written as his own intimate monologue to her. As newspapers and politicians begin to sensationalize the horrible circumstances of her passing, Thiago becomes recluse. He knows there was an unexplainable reason behind Vera’s death, something unknown to reporters. The evidence overwhelming proves something awoke inside the home Thiago and Vera had recently bought. It wasn’t just the curious banging noises and scratching on the walls. It wasn’t just Itza, their smart speaker that sang and performed light shows at odd intervals. Vera’s death was only the beginning. Something is haunting Thiago.

With the apparent ending being Vera’s death, I didn’t expect This Thing Between Us to contain many surprises. Based on the blurb, my thoughts immediate jumped to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Her. This book isn’t even shy about referencing titles it could be categorized with. My assumptions left me wildly unprepared for this unsettling and harrowing novel. With enthralling characterization and frightening new horrors, This Thing Between Us thrives entirely on its own.

Thiago is a captivating main character. His sorrow catching. While Thiago is struggling to make sense of his wife’s death, his mother-in-law embraces him with contempt. The Alvarez family has a dark history. His surname considered ill dispute within society, Thiago is not so accepted within his family either. Despite his appearance, he was never Mexican enough; deemed a “wannabe white person” by others. Thiago’s specific narrative is an overlooked but authentic account of finding one’s place in America.

This Thing Between Us emphasizes more on psychological horror than solving mystery. I felt ensnared between Thiago’s grief and this unsettling supernatural presence. Gus Moreno almost teases this evil manifestation. It’s chaotic nature making it difficult to fully comprehend its full power and magnitude. I wish more had been revealed about its nature. By keeping the story focused on Thiago, we are made witnesses to his ordeal and limited by his understanding.

This Thing Between Us is a book I won’t easily forget. Influenced by his own grief, Gus Moreno channeled such painful emotions and transformed them into a breathtaking story. He is an author to follow.

Review originally posted in Grimdark Magazine.

Of all the horror tropes I love the one I really connect with the most is the sub genre of grief horror. Like a lot of people I have been through the soul crippling grief spiral and wondered what the meaning of life is when your loved ones are no longer with you. This book taps right into all of those fears and drags you through a whirlwind of mind melting freakiness.
I really enjoyed Gus Moreno's writing style. It is quite stark in places, but I loved the way he could express so many feelings in a short sentence and he really captured the mundanity of trying to 'carry on' after a bereavement and coping with other people's expectations at a time when all you want is to be left alone to wallow in your grief.
There were some excellent horror set pieces running throughout and honestly some of them terrified me, not just the pure brutality of some scenes (when I say OH My God!!! I really mean it) but the quiet insidiousness of whatever is haunting Diego before and after his Wife's death was creepy as hell.
I did get a little lost towards the end and I felt like I'd possibly missed an important part of the story which would explain why it didn't all come together for me, but having thought about it a little after finishing I do have some theories. It's definitely a thinker and will stay with you long after you put the book down.

This Thing Between Us
by Gus Moreno
Pub Date: 12 Oct 2021
General Fiction / Horror

A dead wife, a paranormal presence, and a wrestling match with grief, anger and evil.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞: Thiago never wanted an Itza. Vera thought a smart speaker would be a fun distraction from the strange occurrences happening in their condo. Nope. It made things much, much worse. The cold spots; the scratching in the walls; the “door” Thiago kept trying to open in his sleep—all were nothing compared to the peculiar packages that started showing up at the house—like industrial grade lye. It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝: One helluva debut—if you’re a fan of horror / paranormal this is a new author to obsess over. I admit, I’m a total weenie when it comes to the scary stuff but I am also a sucker for any author from my hometown (Chicago, baby!) and a well told, mysterious tale. Congrats to Gus, this is all those things!!

There were also so many beautiful statements on grief and grieving peppered throughout; some that made me full stop. Losing my mom is the hardest thing I've ever been through, and one of the strangely beautiful byproducts of that kind of shattering hurt is being able to instantly recognize it in someone else. Gus Moreno, I'm sorry you are in the club, but I am so grateful to have your words as part of your membership.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐝: Sleeping with the lights on for the foreseeable future…

Read if you:
🏡Want to ditch your Alexa!
🏡Like things that go bump in the night…
🏡Are a Stephen King / HP Lovecraft fan
🏡Have lost someone close to your heart

Thank you to Netgalley & FSG for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

#ThisThingBetweenUs #NetGalley #books #bookstagram #bookclubreads #bookclub #booklover #reading #ilovebooks #bookreview #horror #hurt #grief #guidance #evil #anger #pain #healing #word #therapy

This book! Thank you to Netgalley for a free e-book copy to review. Wow. Grief. It's hard. This book gets it. You can feel it in your bones. The lines, poetic. The words, gut-wrenching. And in addition to all of those deep feels, you get a creepy Alexa type horror story. There's a demon in your Amazon Echo.
"I get now why old cultures and native tribes kept rituals for death . You exorcised the grief with a ritual and it gave everyone something to do, a space to be sad, and after the bereaved lifted that boulder or pierced their scrotum or sipped that hallucinogenic tea, we could all agree that the dead had been sufficiently mourned. They were adequately remembered, and none of us would feel guilty for what felt like a lack of action on our part. Instead of feeling whatever this was.
I feel it every day.
Every day."
It's getting 4 stars for now because I need to reread the last chapter again to soak it in.

[5 Stars]

This book was a wild ride that I loved every minute of. The atmosphere was spot on the whole way through and I never quite knew what would happen next. This genuinely creeped me out multiple times (which is hard to do) so I had to start only picking it up during the day. If you want a character study that's not afraid to delve into the paranormal, I'd highly recommend this.

A great meditation on loss and grieving doesn't takes a horror turn. Great atmospheric writing and creeping dread follow.

Well, this book has put me off owning any sort of Alexa-esque product ever.

Immediately upon starting This Thing Between Us I was filled discomfort. The author does a great job of creating an unsettling atmosphere with his writing. As much as I wanted to continue reading I knew I would soon experience something creepy. I even woke up in the middle of the night, thinking I heard Itza speaking to me. That being said - I absolutely loved this book.

This Thing Between Us opens with Thiago at his wife’s funeral. All we know is that she has died in a tragic accident and over the course of the first half we learn that before she passed, the couple were plagued by strange occurrences. Is their Itza (coughAlexacough) possessed? Is their condo haunted? After Vera’s death, Thiago leaves their home and moves across the country to escape whatever is still living within the walls of their home. But as any horror fan knows - you can’t just leave, it will follow. As the story progresses often times the reader isn’t sure what is real and what is a product of Thiago’s grief. I can’t wait to read it again and see what I missed the first time..

There are some truly scary/gory moments in this book. Also, trigger warning for a few scenes with a dog if that is something that may bother you.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

Okay, so I loved this freaky little creepfest! But also, maybe consider running away from Alexa and Siri as fast as you can? 💀

The book opens at the funeral of Thiago’s wife, Vera. He is way down deep in grief as he begins to remember and piece together some weird stuff that’s been happening around their home before and after Vera died. And it all seems to center around their Itza, an Alexa-like device who is beginning to meddle more and more in their lives. After Vera’s death, Thiago runs over the Itza with his car and moves to Colorado to get as far away from everyone as possible. However, grief, guilt, and evil can find him there too.

Oooohweee, y’all, I devoured this in basically one setting. That cover called to me and I let it draw me right in. And I am telling you, the creep does not let up from beginning to end! I definitely wouldn’t call it horror so don’t let that prevent you from reading this.

The way Moreno combines grief and the intimacies of technology makes for such an original concept! From the beginning, you think the story is going to go one way, but it veers in a whole ‘nother weird direction.

Not only is this book a perfect freakyfest, it also touches on some pretty important topics like cultural identities and immigration. And the emotion in this book! Moreno really captures the deep soul-crushing heartache of loss

Honestly not even 100% sure how the book ends and I don’t care one bit. Can you tell I loved it??

Big heads up- A couple of <possibly evil> animals are harmed and/or killed.

I was surprised by how emotional and complex this book ended up being. A blend of Pet Sematary, Black Mirror, and Joan Didion?? It was a romp, highly recommend for fans of literary horror.

Published by MCD x FSG Originals on October 12, 2021

As Halloween approaches, publishers release horror novels. This one asks the reader to consider whether their Alexa might be haunted.

The protagonist of This Thing Between Us, Thiago Alvarez, has a device called Itza that is obviously Alexa by another name. Itza begins to turn itself on, answers questions it hasn’t been asked, plays bad music, orders unwanted products (including swords and sex toys), and behaves like an unwelcome guest. Mostly Itza wants to be pulled out of the wall, a phrase that only makes sense later in the novel. Returning Itza to the seller seems like a good solution, but Thiago takes more decisive action.

Perhaps it is not Itza that is haunted. Perhaps the former occupant of Thiago’s condo put a hex on the place. The floorboards squeak at night, as if someone is walking on them. There are scratching noises in the walls and spots in the home that are inexplicably cold. Yet Thiago’s worries about Itza and hexes fall to the wayside when his wife Vera is killed after being pushed down a flight of subway stairs by a fleeing criminal.

The criminal is an undocumented alien, a status that sends certain parts of the media into a frenzy while the remaining media devotes its time to covering the frenzy. Thiago writes: “My life was a series of disasters, and the aftermaths only attracted scavengers who picked the rubble for parts they could use for their own means.” Thiago doesn’t want his wife’s death to become a political football, so he says goodbye to his late wife’s mother (Diana) and moves into the woods to hide from his inability to comprehend life or death or meaning.

After that setup, the story ratchets up the creepy. Thiago finds a dog who seems sweet until, perhaps in a reincarnated form, it turns into Cujo. A wall appears in the woods and then moves into the yard. Words appear in books that shouldn’t be there, asking for release from the wall. Someone seems to be possessed. When Diana shows up for a visit, she walks into a nightmare.

This Thing Between Us is written as a communication from Thiago to Vera after her death. The purpose of the communication is revealed near the novel’s end. In the twisted logic of horror fiction, writing to a dead wife makes perfect sense.

Gus Moreno hides the ball for a while. Is this a novel about demons? Is the person wo behaves like a zombie possessed by evil spirits? Have the ghost stories that pervade Mexican culture taken root in Thiago’s family? Is Thiago delusional? The ending leaves most of the reader’s questions unanswered.

Still, the plot is really a device that allows Moreno to consider more important questions. The story asks whether people believe in the afterlife as a way of avoiding loss. At some point, Thiago is invited to join an afterlife that offers the illusion of Heaven, perhaps as a literary suggestion that Heaven is an illusion for all living people who embrace its reality.

Culture and individualism play a big part in the story, from the social schism over undocumented aliens to the cultural knowledge that informs Diana’s effort to exorcise evil from Thiago’s dwelling. Thiago is ashamed that he doesn’t speak Spanish, but Diana was born in Mexico and accepts the supernatural as a given. Thiago is antisocial, a burnout who takes odd jobs in the gig economy, part of America’s culture of loners. He resisted Vera’s preference for social connections, although Vera was also different from her friends in that she preferred museums to clubbing. Perhaps opposites attract, but Thiago feels guilty about “the times we argued because you felt you couldn’t invite people to the condo on account of me hating to be ‘on’ all the time, or me wishing you put half as much effort into taking care of yourself as you put into your job.” He regrets using his mother’s cancer as a tool to manipulate Vera into staying with him when she couldn’t deal with his failings.

I’m not a big fan of horror fiction — reality frightens me more than the supernatural — but I am a fan of insightful writing. Moreno gets into Thiago’s head to explore the universal experience of grief and loss. “In this world we struggle and bitch and fail and hurt and then weep over someone checking out of it all.” “It’s like being at a party and the one friend you knew is suddenly gone.” “When you died I mourned you, but also the version of myself I was with you. So then there were two deaths.”

The story is bleak and the ending is both unhappy and unsatisfying, but it has the advantage of pulling no punches. Moreno blends supernatural horror with the horrible impact that loss has on survivors. I’m not sure that all of the horrific elements make any kind of unified sense, but I am sure that the story would be powerful even without its supernatural foundation.

RECOMMENDED

Right up there with Langan's THE FISHERMAN as an exploration of grief twinned with cosmic horror. Moreno's prose is gentle until it isn't, just like the story. It's interesting to see non-cosmic-horror-versed folks grapple with this one, which is ultimately the tale of a man whose life is turned completely upside down by forces outside his control, forces he doesn't understand, forces he and those around him CANNOT understand because they are true supernatural bogeymen type things. But it's also the story of a man suffering the loss of his partner, the guilt he feels over thinking its his fault, the way that the laws of nature feel upended because of that loss. It's a hell of a read.

Pull me out of the wall.

Reviewed and recommended in the October print issue of BookPage, both individually and as part of an October feature.
Terror and grief are a killer combination. Gus Moreno delivers them both to devastating effect in his latest novel. Thiago Alvarez lost his wife in a tragic accident. Months later, he may also be losing his mind. This Thing Between Us provides an inside view to a husband’s worst nightmare. What’s unclear is his role in these events. .

Moreno’s writing is powerfully immediate and immersive. The story feels like a fever dream, but it’s actually written like a conversation Thiago is having with his dead wife. If psychological horror is your thing, this is probably a great choice.

DNF @ 62%. I've had so many disappointments recently! I just can't bear all the dog death and violence in this. It's disgusting. I do not want to read about the protagonist attacking a dog. I'm done.