This has been the year of horror reads for me. Mostly, it has been very rewarding.

I just finished We Live Here Now by Sarah Pinborough, picked up on a whim, and really found it very satisfying. It’s also proof of how important an author’s voice is to my reading enjoyment.

We Live Here Now involves a super familiar premise: a couple—married or otherwise—full of issues and secrets moves into a house that is less a “fresh start” and more a fresh new hell. I routinely have tossed books like this against the (metaphorical) wall. (I rarely throw books, especially if they’re on my kindle!) I saw War of the Roses at an impressionable age and what it impressed upon me is how much I disliked watching a couple tear each other apart. How little tolerance I have for truly mean-spirited people. It’s especially irritating to me in a modern setting where it becomes increasingly difficult (plausibility wise) to keep a couple together. In the age of “setting healthy boundaries”, it’s hard to imagine couples staying together when they have come to actively dislike each other.

So, I started this book expecting that I would DNF it. But! I loved it.

And that is all due to Pinborough’s voice. She glides through this story. Just when the characters do something appalling, she’s there to remind you, it’s not just them—it’s the house encouraging this behavior—and the characters spend as much time regretting their behavior as they do committing the acts. It makes it so easy to just keep moving through the story.

Minor spoilers follow:

It’s told in three POVs. Emily’s, Freddie’s, and weirdly enough, a crow. The crow’s POV was unusual, but not off-putting. Another major point in Pinborough’s favor, because I often dislike animal POVs.

It’s got all the usual spooky accoutrements you want in a haunted house story—creaking doors, scratching noises, ominous messages, a country vicar, a few eerie rumors, windows that open and close, a terrible stench, a room that feels dangerously unwelcoming. And honestly, the usual plus the couple plus her strong writing would be enough, but then she adds the twist (which I will not discuss other than to say I very much enjoyed this element) which changes the whole feel of the story. It’s not just a haunted house story. It’s something weirder and better and just sold me on the whole thing. It went from a novel I enjoyed to a novel I want to make sure other people read. 

I think though, if it hadn’t been Pinborough writing it, I might have DNFed before the twist, and I would have missed out.

It seems like every holiday gets pushed on us earlier and earlier and you know, in the case of Halloween, I’m not mad about it. Spooky Season used to be Oct 1, but now apparently it’s Sep 1 and hey, I’ve started it off well with We Live Here Now.