This is a truly cinematic reading experience! It looks like it's possibly going to be made into a Netflix series, which would be a great vehicle to tell this story. I feel like this was billed as a thriller, but make no mistake, this is horror. Maybe it starts in thriller territory, but it's a fast ride to some real Stephen King-type gore.

Eve and Charlie fix up houses, and they've found one that they're about to start working on. They've just moved in, when a family of five knocks on the door. The father says he grew up in the house, and wants to show his kids around. Against her better judgment, Eve relents, and one thing after another, it's hours later, and these folks are still here. To safely avoid spoiler territory, I'll just say things get really weird from that point on.

The level of tension is high from the very beginning and really doesn't let up. Each weird event is more and more disturbing and frustrating (in a good way) and there's that horror movie-esque "DON"T GO IN THERE!" vibe throughout the whole book. The ending seemed a little rushed and I wish some of the characters (like the children in the family) had been a little more fleshed out, but overall, this is a really fun read.

This was very atmospheric and well-paced; I read the whole thing in one sitting.

Kliewer has some grating writing tics ("That's a professional." - "What's that?" - "A professional?" - "yeah" is a sequence of question/question/repeat the question/affirmative answer/explanation that occurs very frequently, sometimes multiple times per chapter) and I wish there were more answers to what the hell what was going on and why, but this is an engrossing, fun debut!

“As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.”
It’s not long before strange things start to happen…

It’s rare that I will find a book that gives me a true sense of dread. When I say dread, I mean the visceral feeling of deep discomfort that you can feel in your bones—the feeling you get when you know someone is watching you, but no matter where you look, you can’t find the eyes planted on your back. After finishing this book, I didn’t want to turn my light off.
We Used To Live Here depicts the very essence of what it means to fall into madness. Nothing in this book will make you feel safe. Every character and every piece of dialog will have you questioning what you thought you already knew. Every detail is important and not a single sentence is to be ignored.
I read this book in one sitting. Well, a sitting and a half. I read three chapters before bed one night and realized I had to put it down if I wanted to get any sleep. I picked it up the next day and devoured it. This book had an unputdownable quality that is hard to master, but Kliewer nailed it. There was no point during this whole story that I felt like the narration was dragging or that I was being taken out of the story in any way. This is a book that I will definitely end up rereading just so I can experience all these emotions again.
I was so happy to see that Netflix has picked up the rights to make a movie out of this book. I hope they do it justice because what Marcus Kliewer has created here is genius and deserves the very best.

We Used To Live Here was horrifying in the best way possible, and I recommend it to anyone who likes psychological thrillers and/or horror.

I do t know how this was put into the my feedback shelf. I have not had the opportunity to read or review this title.
A review will come soon

I rated this a 2 but I wish I could give it a 1.5. I hope by some miracle it ends differently in the final version. I actually thought the concept was very cool. I love old houses with weird rooms and nooks and crannies, old sealed off hallways and secret rooms. That part was fun. Aside from a big plot hole I noticed (no spoilers), I still have so many questions and feel extremely let down and frustrated. I feel like I just read half a book without an ending. And not in a fun way but a frustrating way. I guess this was supposed to be ambiguous but there’s just too much we don’t know to even venture a guess. This book just made me mad and I wasted my time.

Engaging and atmospheric. A recommended purchase for collections where spooky thrillers are popular.

I am not a horror person. I’m not into horror movies, I’ve never even attempted a horror book before. (That I remember!)

With that said, I’m not sure that We Used To Live Here is a General Fiction/Mystery & Thriller but it’s not really horror, either! It’s definitely creepy right from the beginning though, that’s for sure!

Eve + Charlie are renovating an old house and at the beginning, it all just seems interesting and charming. Then, Thomas and his family show up. It goes from weird to downright odd and creepy from there.

The book has good pacing, interesting details and just enough creep to keep you reading. This isn’t my genre of book and I would have definitely put it down if I wasn’t so invested in seeing what happened to Eve + Charlie!

advance reader copy provided by NetGalley and Atria but all opinions are my own.

My thanks to #AtriaBooks #NetGalley and #MarcusKliewer for the ARC of #WeUsedtoLiveHere. Rehabbing a rambling old house basically out in the middle of nowhere, Charlie and Eve plan to flip the house, doing most of the work themselves, for a tidy profit. One day, while Charlie is away, Eve opens the door to find an entire family standing there. The father claims they were nearby and he used to live there and wanted to show his kids where he grew up. Against her better judgement, Eve lets them in. Okay, first, let me tell you – the house has an attic full of detritus, a basement, and there is construction going on all over the place – these are all warning signs for an absolute horror story. I found this book to be terrifying (in a good way, of course). Absolutely terrifying. The family comes in, it’s all completely innocent as dad shows them around, this is where I grew up – only Eve gets a creepy vibe from him, then the youngest child, their daughter goes missing, presumably playing hide and seek in the house. There is so much to say, but I risk spoilers. Let me just say, the family doesn’t leave. This book is creepy as hell and I can hardly wait for the Netflix adaptation. This book is most excellent.

What did I just read! 😳 This book was the definition of spooky, eerie, and sinister. On top of that, the concept was something I’ve never read before.

Eve and her partner Charlie flip houses for a living and purchase an old home kind of in the middle of nowhere. Home alone, Eve hears a knock at the door to which she finds a man and his family, where he claims to have lived there years before. Uncertain, Eve let’s them in for fifteen minutes TOPS. As soon as the family enters, strange things continue to happen. Something is wrong with this house or the visiting family… or is it her?

As interesting and creepy as it all was, nothing made sense in the end. I’m all for leaving it open ended to the reader but nothing was explained and I was left with more questions than when I started. I was hoping that all the information scattered throughout would hold more meaning and tie back together better than it did. There was so much potential but I was frankly disappointed.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the copy in exchange for my honest review!

Creepy, twisty, bizarre, compelling. Once you start, it's impossible to put down. The ending almost made it feel (to me) open to another book, which I definitely hope so. I recommend it for horror and suspense readers who want something new and fresh that can easily be consumed in a day or two.

**Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.**

From the moment the family appears on Eve's door step asking to get a peek inside of what was once the man's childhood home, I knew this one was going to scare me. Just give us 15 minutes to look around, he asks. My brain is saying - DO NOT LET STRANGERS IN YOUR HOUSE! And, I continued to scream at Eve, co-owner of the home, get them out, get them out, get them out. But her need to be a people pleaser and passive personality will take the reader from the basement to the attic on a gut-wrenching ride.
All the creeks and groans, scary children, untrustworthy neighbors, isolated property, and religious fanatics are meshed together to bring maximum thrills and chills.

Thank you to Atria/Emily Bestler Books for an early e-copy via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars

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

I couldn’t put this one down! Right off the bat I was sucked in, I all but finished it in one sitting. This is the perfect mystery/thriller, I was on edge right from the start (and basically the whole book). We Used to Live Here was such an entertaining book and I can’t wait to see the movie now!

"We Used to Live Here" was nothing like what I expected but was so much more thrilling too. The twists at the end really threw me for a loop and left me thinking even after the book was done, connecting some of the dots afterwards. So good!

Thanks to Atria for the eARC.
This is absolutely one of the best and most terrifying horror novels I've ever read. The author creates such a tension here right from the first page. If a family showed up on your door step and asked to see the house because the father grew up there, would you let them in? I would say definitely not, but Eve has empathy and says yes. That's all you need to know, and I highly suggest going into this story with no other knowledge. Throughout there were so many truly creepy parts that I wished I hadn't finished right before I went to bed. Also, the way the author included other information in the story was brilliant. I wasn't sure what was going on there but the way Kliewer wrapped this story up on the very last page was truly incredible. It takes a lot of skill to end a story that well, or dare I say perfectly, that I was left so impressed with the story telling here. An excellent book that will definitely be in my top reads of 2024.

I've been reading Stephen King since I was nine years old. Horror is my favorite genre, and I watch scary movies to relax. I'm not easy to scare. And We Used to Live Here terrified me. I would have read it in one day, except that I wasn't brave enough to read it at night.

Don't let that domestic drama-ish cover mislead you: This book is pure cosmic horror. It centers on a young couple, Eve and Charlie, who have recently purchased an isolated, ramshackle home deep in the Oregon wilderness with the intention of flipping it. One night, a few weeks after they move in, Eve is waiting for Charlie to get home when there's a knock at the door. It's a perfectly harmless-looking family -- two parents, three children -- and the father says he grew up in the house, and would Eve mind terribly if he brought his family in to look around? Just for 15 minutes?

Even that brief summary sounds like the beginning of a domestic suspense novel, but trust me when I say that We Used to Live Here veers in completely unexpected, mind-bending directions. From the very first page, the atmosphere feels menacing and ominous, laced with a mounting sense of unease that quickly becomes all-out dread. The scene in the attic in particular was relayed so vividly, with so much tension and malignancy, that I could literally feel my heart racing. And the unease, the sense of wrongness, I felt during the scene in the neighbor's house...It still makes me shudder. This book is scary.

I actually found We Used to Live Here even scarier for the lack of explanation it provides; there's a lot left to interpretation, a lot that isn't overtly explained in the book's conclusion. That's not going to please every reader, but often the most frightening and unsettling things are the ones we can't explain -- just like many of the rooted-in-reality topics that Marcus Kliewer incorporates into the plot: the Mandela effect, doppelgängers, sleep paralysis demons. I think Kliewer gave us enough to fill in the blanks ourselves -- and there is even a hidden message embedded in the book that provides an additional nugget of information (read and observe closely!).

We Used to Live Here was a completely gripping, truly unsettling, and often downright horrifying reading experience for me. I see you, Marcus Kliewer, and I can't wait for more. Thank you to Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the early reading opportunity.

I love me a story like this! It kept me captivated from the first chapter. I just think a wide variety/range of people will really enjoy this! I recommend.

How creepy was that? Man, I love and hate the home alone trope. Where a character is by themselves, and someone shows up. This whole book made me so uneasy. I expect that was the intention. The writing style took a while to get used to. I don't know how to explain it, but it is different. This is really why I am going 3.5 stars and not a full 4. Can't wait to see the Blake Lively movie and compare.

I’m still trying to figure out what I just read, but in the best way! The way I devoured the last half of this book is insane. We Used to Live here had me gripped from the first chapter. It was a mix of creepy paranormal elements with a dash of “wtf is going on”. It’s hard for a book to genuinely creep me out & this one nailed it! Bravo Mr. Kliewer, this book deserves all the stars!

I’m sitting here almost 24 hours after finishing this book and still cannot stop picking it apart in all the best ways. Firstly, it takes a lot for me to be actually scared while reading, and this one did it. It’s beyond creepy, giving an almost claustrophobic feeling as you spiral right along with Eve.

Eve and Charlie buy an old mansion in the forest to live in while they renovate and flip. One night while Charlie is at work, there’s a knock on the door and Eve reluctantly answers. Thomas Faust and his family are on the porch, saying he used to live in the home as a kid and would love if he could show his family around quickly. Literally from the second Eve lets them in, things become completely unhinged. Hide and Seek kids, a weird hospital hallway that magically appears in the basement, a window that morphs from a stained glass to a rectangle, strange neighbors, a demon in the cabin next door, all I could think was WHAT IS HAPPENING?! Without giving anything away, this is true horror at its best. I was uncomfortable reading this and I think that was the intent. I hope Netflix is still planning on adapting this to film and I think I’ll give it another read through when it’s published.

That being said, SPOILER QUESTIONS BELOW!!

I do have so many questions though that I felt were left unraveled.
The ants- what were the ants doing?!
Were Paige and the kids also ghosts/demon spirits?
Did Eve/Emma replace Allison/Alina or does Thomas just repeat this same terror over and over again with different victims?
Was the cabin ghoul really Thomas in disguise? What’s up with Heather?
WHY was Thomas trapped by the house, or was the house trapped by Thomas?
I’m assuming Eve slipped into another universe by the end with the last Chapter from Charlie’s POV- I’d love a sequel showing how she remembers Eve OR even a prequel showing how Thomas came to be.

Overall a beautiful horrific debut from Marcus Kliewer! He’s an author on my radar now and can’t wait to see what he releases in the future.

I really enjoyed this book. It was different than anything else I've read recently. I couldn't put it down! I will keep an eye out for this author's future work!